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The American Prospect - articles by authorenThe Kremlin Is Back, and U.S. Elections Aren’t Readyhttp://prospect.org/article/kremlin-back-and-us-elections-aren%E2%80%99t-ready
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<p>Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to a question during his annual news conference in Moscow</p>
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<p><span class="dropcap">P</span>resident Trump may dismiss Russian interference in the U.S. election as “fake news,” but top officials in his own administration are not so sanguine.</p>
<p>Secretary of State Rex Tillerson already sees signs that Russia is trying to interfere in the 2018 midterms, he <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/02/06/russians-already-meddling-in-us-midterms-tillerson-says.html">told Fox News</a> this week. Tillerson’s disclosure came on the heels of an equally bleak assessment from CIA Director Mike Pompeo last month. Asked by the BBC whether Russia would target the U.S. midterms, <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mike-pompeo-russia-election-interference_us_5a702963e4b00d0de223638a">Pompeo replied</a>: “Of course. I have every expectation that they will continue to try and do that.”</p>
<p>One might expect such high-level warnings to spur action on Capitol Hill, where foreign election interference has historically alarmed both parties. Instead, Republicans have become <a href="http://prospect.org/article/think-republicans-went-bonkers-over-nunes-memo-just-wait">so consumed</a> with protecting Trump from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe that they’ve effectively scuttled several common-sense bills that would help secure the nation’s elections.</p>
<p>On Thursday, House Democrats called for immediate hearings on cybersecurity threats to the election system, and Senate Democrats took to the floor to castigate Trump for not doing enough to protect the elections infrastructure. Fourteen watchdog and election reform advocacy groups also wrote House Speaker Paul Ryan to express “deep concern” over his failure to take action to “protect the nation’s security, the integrity of our presidential and congressional elections, and the interests of the American people.”</p>
<p>Lawmakers have held hearings and introduced bills focused on foreign meddling, but don’t expect action before the midterms, or even by 2020. GOP leaders have taken their cue from Trump, who dismisses the entire notion of Russian meddling as a political “witch hunt.” Only one Republican, Senator John McCain, of Arizona, has signed onto <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/1989/cosponsors">a carefully drawn bill</a> that would shed light on digital political ads, which Russians used to distribute disinformation to millions of Americans in 2016. A smattering of Republicans have joined Democrats in forwarding several other election security bills, but GOP leaders have made no move to advance them.</p>
<p>“Various solutions have been proposed but none has been adopted, and the clock is ticking,” said Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center, on a recent conference call to release <a href="http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/document/report-examining-foreign-interference-us-elections">a CLC report</a> on foreign election interference. “Unfortunately, this matter of foreign interference has been swept into the vortex of partisan discord. And Congress’s failure to respond to the events in 2016 leaves us vulnerable this year and in 2020.”</p>
<p>The CLC’s report, which documents secret foreign spending on campaigns and digital ads, as well as attempted election system hacking, is one of several that spotlights regulatory and legal weaknesses that make the U.S. vulnerable to Russia and other foreign actors. A <a href="https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/SPrt_115-21.pdf">January 10 report</a> released by Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee details a two decades-long assault on democratic institutions by Russian President Vladimir Putin in his own country, in the U.S., and across Europe, using military incursions, cyberattacks, and disinformation.</p>
<p>“<span class="pullquote-right">Despite the clear assaults on our democracy and our allies in Europe, the U.S. government still does not have a coherent, comprehensive, and coordinated approach to the Kremlin’s malign influence operations, either abroad or at home</span>,” <a href="https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/SPrt_115-21.pdf">warns the report</a>, which was commissioned by the committee’s ranking Democrat, Maryland’s Ben Cardin.</p>
<p>Election experts stress that <a href="http://www.routefifty.com/management/2017/09/election-hacks-sorting-fact-fiction/141359/">there’s no evidence</a> that the Kremlin succeeded in altering voting tallies in 2016, though Department of Homeland Security officials <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/21/politics/russia-hacking-hearing-states-targeted/index.html">have testified</a> that Russia-linked hackers targeted election systems in as many as 21 states. And despite congressional paralysis, state election officials <a href="http://prospect.org/article/election-security-feds-flounder-while-states-make-strides">have taken significant steps</a> to protect their voting machines and databases from hacking, often in tandem with DHS, which designated the nation’s election systems as <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/01/06/statement-secretary-johnson-designation-election-infrastructure-critical">critical infrastructure</a> shortly before President Trump took office in January of 2017.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, <a href="http://www.routefifty.com/management/2017/09/election-hacks-sorting-fact-fiction/141359/">“the threat is real,”</a> according to David Becker, who founded and heads the Center for Election Innovation and Research. A report <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/events/2018/01/29/445569/election-security-50-states-defending-americas-elections/">scheduled for release</a> on Monday by the Center for American Progress concludes that security weaknesses exist in every single state, despite recent strides. Many states have replaced vulnerable touch-screen machines with voting systems that produce a paper trail that can be verified by voters, for example, or instituted post-election audits, but gaps remain.</p>
<p>“There are vulnerabilities in election infrastructure in all 50 states and the District of Columbia,” says Danielle Root, CAP’s voting rights manager. States tend to do well in some areas but not others, notes Root. “It’s clear that election officials are taking this issue incredibly seriously,” she adds. “But there remains room for improvement in every single state.”</p>
<p>What states need more than anything is money—the kind of money that Congress doled out in federal grants via the 2002 Help America Vote Act, following the contested 2000 presidential election. Back then, Democrats and Republicans came together to send more than $3 billion to the states to upgrade their dilapidated voting machines and make other election system improvements.</p>
<p>It would cost far less than that—an estimated $1.25 billion over a ten-year period—to defend states from future cyberattacks, according to <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/democracy/reports/2017/10/26/441417/on-havas-15th-anniversary-congress-needs-to-make-u-s-elections-more-secure/">a CAP analysis</a> released last year. That calculation projects that it would cost $1 billion to upgrade voting machines, $5 million a year to assess cyber-threats to voter registration databases, and $20 million to conduct post-election audits nationwide.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/365986-bipartisan-group-of-lawmakers-introduces-new-election-security-bill">bipartisan bill</a> introduced in December by Senate Republican James Lankford, of Oklahoma, would go a long way to achieving those goals. It would give states federal grants to phase out all paperless voting machines, facilitate information sharing between state and federal officials about cyberattacks and security threats, and encourage post-election audits based on statistical sampling.</p>
<p>These are the precisely the kinds of fixes that voting experts hold up as the gold standard in election security. But so far, Lankford’s Election Security Act has only five cosponsors. The Democrats are Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, California’s Kamala Harris, and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico. The other Republicans are Susan Collins of Maine and South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham.</p>
<p>In 2002, the Help America Vote Act passed the Senate by 92-2. Sixteen years later, Republican leaders treat any legislation that includes Democratic cosponsors as radioactive. When Russia or another foreign player inevitably strikes again, the GOP will have only itself to blame. As Cardin said on releasing his report: “Never before in American history has so clear a threat to national security been so clearly ignored by a U.S. president.”</p>
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<p><em>This post has been updated.</em></p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 08 Feb 2018 15:02:43 +0000229511 at http://prospect.orgEliza Newlin CarneyWhat First Amendment?http://prospect.org/article/what-first-amendment
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<p>April Ryan, of American Urban Radio Networks, raises her hand to ask a question of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders during a press briefing at the White House</p>
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<p><span class="dropcap">C</span>onservatives who should be appalled by President Donald Trump’s anti-media attacks have responded instead with a collective shrug.</p>
<p>Never mind that Trump has taken steps to block publication of a critical book, assures <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/book-banning-bunkum-1515361290">a typical <em>Wall Street Journal</em> editorial</a>—he would never follow through, and the courts would never go along. The<em> Journal </em>likewise brushes off Trump’s threat to “open up” the libel laws as “familiar and feckless bluster.” Trump may brand journalists <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/business/trump-calls-the-news-media-the-enemy-of-the-people.html">“the enemy”</a> of the American people and hand out <a href="https://gop.com/the-highly-anticipated-2017-fake-news-awards/">“fake news” awards</a>, goes the argument from the right, but his actions matter more than his words.</p>
<p>This sanguine take on Trump’s campaign to demonize the news media overlooks the real-world damage it inflicts on journalists, both at home and abroad. Trump’s words and actions have materially chilled speech—in the U.S., where <a href="https://pressfreedomtracker.us/">78 journalists were attacked or arrested</a> last year, and around the world, <a href="https://cpj.org/data/imprisoned/2017/#~(status~'Imprisoned~charges~(~)~localOrForeign~(~)~gender~(~)~employedAs~(~)~jobs~(~)~coverages~(~)~mediums~(~)~cc_fips~(~)~end_year~'2017~group_by~'location)">262 journalists are in prison</a>, 21 of them for publishing “fake news.” The toxic fallout includes <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2018/01/23/fake-news-allegedly-provoked-man-making-death-threats-cnn/">death threats</a>, <a href="https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/adl-task-force-issues-report-detailing-widespread-anti-semitic-harassment-of">anti-Semitic media harassment</a>, physical attacks, and GOP governors who <a href="https://www.kshb.com/news/state/missouri/gov-grietens-complains-about-lack-of-news-coverage-but-grants-few-interviews">deny interviews</a>. (One politician <a href="http://missoulian.com/news/government-and-politics/greg-gianforte-gets-anger-management-community-service-after-admitting-he/article_b55f1ca5-b7eb-5183-a889-a3085c62a67e.html">paid more than $5,000</a> in fines and restitution after body-slamming a reporter.)</p>
<p>American journalists on <a href="http://www.newseum.org/event/journalism-in-the-trump-era-assessing-press-freedom-in-the-united-states/?instance_id=51161">a recent panel</a> co-hosted by the Newseum and the Committee to Protect Journalists described struggling to do their work in an unprecedented atmosphere of hostility, suspicion, stonewalling, and even fear. Death threats are routine. “The FBI is on speed dial. So is the Secret Service, and the local police department,” said panelist April Ryan, White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks, who has publicly tangled with Trump.</p>
<p>Foreign journalists are paying an even bigger price, prompting some conservatives to finally speak up. Trump’s “unrelenting attacks on the integrity of American journalists and news outlets” have “provided cover for repressive regimes to follow suit,” wrote GOP Senator John McCain, of Arizona, in a recent <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mr-president-stop-attacking-the-press/2018/01/16/9438c0ac-faf0-11e7-a46b-a3614530bd87_story.html?utm_term=.a6cef3987f57"><em>Washington Post </em>op-ed</a>. McCain cited journalists arrested and systematically discredited in China, Egypt, Russia, Turkey, Venezuela, and elsewhere.</p>
<p>His fellow Arizona Republican, Senator Jeff Flake, noted in <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/17/the-free-press-is-the-despots-enemy-read-flakes-senate-speech.html">a Senate floor speech</a> that such despots as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte have used the words “fake news” to justify their human rights abuses. Trump’s use of Josef Stalin’s phrase “enemy of the people” to describe journalists “is a testament to the condition of our democracy,” said Flake, who added that “of course, the president has it precisely backward—despotism is the enemy of the people. The free press is the despot's enemy, which makes the free press the guardian of democracy.”</p>
<p>Conservatives’ blithe dismissal of Trump’s chilling impact is all the more striking given the First Amendment’s increasingly central place in conservative orthodoxy. The conviction, <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2010/05/the_big_ban_theory.html">however unfounded</a>, that campaign-finance limits would lead to book banning was at the heart of the Supreme Court’s <em>Citizens United </em>ruling to deregulate corporate political spending. Since Hillary Clinton opposed that ruling, conservatives argue, she posed a greater First Amendment threat than Trump. Besides, they assure, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch will rigorously defend free speech.</p>
<p>But not all First Amendment defenders take Trump’s media wars so lightly. None other than constitutional law expert Floyd Abrams, who led the GOP’s charge to deregulate politics in the name of free speech in <em>Citizens United</em>, warned <em>The Wall Street Journal</em> <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-trumps-censorship-bluster-is-truly-worrying-1515608124">in a letter</a> that its editorial board is “far too serene” about Trump’s bid to silence author Michael Wolff. Trump’s threats have led to actual lawsuits, Abrams wrote, and “not all publications and journalists can so easily shrug off such threats of financially crippling litigation.”</p>
<p>In an interview, Abrams acknowledged that Trump would find it hard to expand libel laws, which now fall largely under state jurisdiction. But he warned that there is no guarantee that an extraordinary event, such as a terrorist attack, might not prompt Trump to push hard to federalize libel laws. Abrams said he’s “hopeful” that Gorsuch will rigorously defend the First Amendment, but that “no one knows” how he might rule in a case that, say, pitted national security against free speech concerns. Trump has so far been “unable to stifle speech of which he disapproves” noted Abrams, “but the unending drumbeat of criticism, accusation, and denigration of the press takes a toll.”</p>
<p>Indeed, <span class="pullquote-right">Trump’s assault on free speech is far more direct, aggressive, and broadly destructive than anything yet seen in the United States.</span> He’s <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/04/politics/trump-bannon-letter-legal-action/index.html">threatened legal action</a> to silence critics; called for news organizations to <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/01/donald-trump-wants-to-be-dictator-of-the-united-states/">fire specific journalists</a>; tweeted videos and images of himself <a href="https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/12/24/trump-retweets-image-that-appears-to-depict-cnns-blood-on-shoe/23316323/">inflicting bloody violence</a> on figures bearing the logo of CNN, a favorite target; and has weaponized mainstream media outlets as “fake news.”</p>
<p>The news media, from cable channels dominated by shouting matches to news outlets that fail to check their facts, do share some of the blame for this mess. Only 33 percent of Americans have a “very favorable” or “somewhat favorable” opinion of the news media, noted a <a href="https://knightfoundation.org/reports/american-views-trust-media-and-democracy">report from Gallup and the Knight Foundation</a>, and 66 percent say the media are bad at separating fact from opinion. Such surveys reflect a larger news industry crisis in confidence, and come amid soul-searching forums like the one at <a href="http://www.newseum.org/event/journalism-in-the-trump-era-assessing-press-freedom-in-the-united-states/?instance_id=51161">the Newseum</a>, and another this week at <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/post-live-2018-americans-media-poll/?utm_term=.489acc63c09e"><em>The Washington Post</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p>And progressives, too, have failed to consistently defend free speech. Campus political protests, while often <a href="https://www.commentarymagazine.com/culture-civilization/education/free-speech-campus-worried-not-alarmed/">overblown</a> and even <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/02/opinion/a-controversial-speaker-comes-to-campus-what-do-you-do.html">egged on</a> by conservative provocateurs, have raised legitimate First Amendment concerns. “Anti-fa” activists have <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/350524-antifa-activists-say-violence-is-necessary">resorted to violence</a>. President Barack Obama kept a tight rein on information, was not transparent, and aggressively prosecuted whistleblowers, <a href="https://rsf.org/en/news/press-freedom-under-trump-turbulent-times-ahead">according to Reporters Without Borders</a>.</p>
<p>But Trump’s assault on free speech goes far deeper, advancing a Soviet-style disinformation campaign that helps fuel what a recent <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2314.html">Rand Corporation report</a> dubbed “Truth Decay.” Trump treats facts as irrelevant and fungible, having made <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/01/20/president-trump-made-2140-false-or-misleading-claims-in-his-first-year/?utm_term=.52bc9a75dcfb">2,140 false or misleading claims</a> in his first year. Yet heightened disagreement about facts and how to interpret data, Rand’s report warns, contributes to government dysfunction, hurts diplomacy and economic investments, and poses “a threat to the health and future of U.S. democracy.”</p>
<p>And Trump may be gearing up to go further, materially weakening media protections in the U.S. Last year, <a href="https://pressfreedomtracker.us/">34 American journalists were arrested</a>, many when they were covering protests, and one photojournalist <a href="https://www.sacurrent.com/the-daily/archives/2017/12/21/sa-photojournalist-alexei-wood-found-not-guilty-on-all-7-inauguration-day-charges">went to trial</a> (and was acquitted) for a felony offense. American journalists still enjoy far greater institutional protections than journalists in, say, Turkey, where <a href="https://cpj.org/data/imprisoned/2017/#~(status~'Imprisoned~charges~(~)~localOrForeign~(~)~gender~(~)~employedAs~(~)~jobs~(~)~coverages~(~)~mediums~(~)~cc_fips~(~)~end_year~'2017~group_by~'location)">73 journalists are now imprisoned</a>, notes Alexandra Ellerbeck, North American program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists.</p>
<p>Attorney General Jeff Sessions has signaled plans to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/sessions-wants-a-leak-investigation-rule-change-that-could-cripple-the-free-press/2017/09/13/322e466a-94da-11e7-aace-04b862b2b3f3_story.html?utm_term=.34c83b60183b">revise Obama administration media guidelines</a>, making it easier for the Trump administration to subpoena reporters. Obama prosecuted eight leakers under the Espionage Act, according to CPJ, but the Trump administration has 27 leak investigations open. Any move that makes it harder for journalists to protect their sources is a “fundamental and basic assault on information gathering and news reporting,” warns Ellerbeck.</p>
<p>None of this seems to worry supposed First Amendment champions on the right. With a few exceptions, such as Flake and McCain, conservatives take Trump’s assaults on free speech merrily in stride. As GOP election lawyer Jim Bopp recently <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/01/19/21480/actions-not-words-tell-trumps-political-money-story">assured the Center for Public Integrity</a>:</p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in;">Liberals refuse to understand with Trump that you can’t take what he says literally. What is important about Trump is what he’s doing and not what he’s saying, and in practice, everything he’s done is in step with maintaining a First Amendment-friendly approach to campaign finance.</p>
<p>Bopp’s comments shed light on the real reason Republicans don’t really care whether Trump trashes press freedoms. For many on the right, the First Amendment is less important as a tool to protect speech than to protect money, and those who spend it. As ethics attorney Kathleen Clark, who teaches law at Washington University in St. Louis, puts it: “Economic power, and the ability to exploit economic power, is at the center of their vision of the First Amendment.”</p>
<p>It’s not the only way that Republicans have swept aside Trump’s threats to democracy, national security and the rule of law. If they just change the subject to Hillary Clinton or Neil Gorsuch, Republicans seem to think, all will be well. Nor is it the first time the GOP has elevated partisan politics above long-cherished principles. But given how highly conservatives purport to prize the First Amendment, it’s remarkable how casually they’ve abandoned it.</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated. </em></p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 25 Jan 2018 14:31:12 +0000229404 at http://prospect.orgEliza Newlin CarneyChasing Down Rabbit Holes After Fusion GPShttp://prospect.org/article/chasing-down-rabbit-holes-after-fusion-gps
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<p>Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent who was hired by Fusion GPS and compiled a dossier on Donald Trump</p>
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<p><span class="dropcap">I</span>n their zeal to discredit Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Republicans have found a convenient scapegoat in the controversial consulting firm Fusion GPS. Republicans have subpoenaed the firm’s bank records, questioned its organizers for more than 20 hours, asked the FBI to investigate one of its subcontractors, and sued the firm for defamation.</p>
<p>Fusion GPS is an easy target. As an outfit that traffics in digging up dirt on power brokers, the firm specializes in “finding unsavory things about unsavory people, at the behest of not-especially-savory clients,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/us/politics/fusion-gps-glenn-simpson.html">notes <em>The New York Times</em></a>. Republicans have made much of the firm’s ties to Russian lawyer and Moscow insider Natalia V. Veselnitskaya, who participated in a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/08/us/politics/trump-russia-kushner-manafort.html?_r=0">much-scrutinized meeting</a> with Trump’s son, campaign manager, and son-in-law in 2016.</p>
<p>But even Fusion GPS has constitutional and legal rights, and its treatment at the hands of Republicans helps explain why <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/feinstein-releases-testimony-of-glenn-simpson-whose-research-firm-fusion-gps-was-behind-trump-dossier/2018/01/09/15da150a-f562-11e7-beb6-c8d48830c54d_story.html?utm_term=.a6f8e514718b">Democrats are so alarmed</a> by the mounting GOP campaign to sabotage Mueller and his investigation. Republicans purport to champion the rule of law and the First Amendment, but their growing effort to discredit Mueller—which intensifies the closer the special counsel gets to the president—places both at risk.</p>
<p>Republicans are “chasing down partisan investigative rabbit holes” and threatening the integrity of the democratic process, charged Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in a Tuesday speech on the Senate floor. Increasingly, the GOP’s favorite rabbit hole is Fusion GPS, which was hired first by Republicans and later by Democrats to investigate Donald Trump during the 2016 election.</p>
<p>Republicans’ special target at Fusion is Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence agent hired by the firm who produced a notorious “dossier” containing compromising personal and financial information about Trump’s supposed Russian exploits. <em>BuzzFeed </em>published the dossier, despite questions about its credibility. Now Trump’s longtime lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, who is named in the Trump dossier, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/us/politics/michael-cohen-russia-dossier-buzzfeed.html">has sued both Fusion GPS and <em>BuzzFeed</em></a> for defamation.</p>
<p>Republicans claim, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/01/09/what-you-need-to-know-about-christopher-steele-the-fbi-and-the-dossier/?utm_term=.4222e8725d44">despite evidence to the contrary</a>, that Russia somehow commissioned the dossier, and that the material triggered Mueller’s probe. House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes of California, whom Democrats say is helping obstruct that panel’s investigation into Russian election interference, has convinced the Justice Department, under threat of subpoena, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/03/politics/rod-rosenstein-house-intel-russia/index.html">to hand over documents</a> relating to the FBI’s handling of the Steele dossier. And two Senate Republicans—Iowa’s Charles Grassley and South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham—<a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/367631-gop-senators-request-criminal-investigation-of-trump-dossier-author">have asked the Justice Department</a> to investigate whether Steele lied to federal authorities.</p>
<p>Congressional Republicans also sought to discredit Fusion GPS <a href="https://www.gop.com/fusion-gps-ties-to-russia-exposed/">in a post on the gop.gov website</a> as “a Russian backed, Democrat connected research firm, with a history of smearing information and pitching fake information to reporters.” The firm’s founders, former journalists Glenn R. Simpson and Peter Fritsch, shot back with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/opinion/republicans-investigation-fusion-gps.html">a <em>New York Times </em>op-ed</a> calling on the Senate Judiciary Committee to release the full transcript of the firm’s testimony.</p>
<p>The op-ed detailed a harassment and intimidation campaign that, had it been orchestrated by Democrats against a GOP firm, would have outraged Republicans. This included personal attacks by Trump, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/opinion/republicans-investigation-fusion-gps.html">wrote Simpson and Fritsch</a>, and by allies of the president who “dug through our bank records and sought to tarnish our firm to punish us for highlighting his links to Russia. Conservative news outlets and even our former employer, <em>The Wall Street Journal</em>, have spun a succession of mendacious conspiracy theories about our motives and backers.” The two also note that highlighting Trump’s Russia ties “is our right under the First Amendment.”</p>
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<p>Judiciary Chairman Grassley balked at the transcript request, and labeled Simpson and Fritsch “uncooperative.” But the panel’s ranking Democrat, California’s Dianne Feinstein, put the lie to that argument when she unilaterally released the full transcript of the Fusion GPS testimony, without consulting Grassley, this week. (Grassley called Feinstein’s move “<a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/368144-grassley-blasts-feinstein-decision-to-release-fusion-gps-transcript-as">confounding</a>.”)</p>
<p>The transcript also pokes a hole in Republicans’ attempt to smear Fusion GPS as shill for Democrats. In <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/09/us/politics/document-Fusion-GPS-Simpson-Transcript.html">his testimony</a>, Simpson voices pride in his “long proud history of not being partisan,” and states: “We intentionally don't hire people who have strong partisan affiliations. We prefer journalists who don't see things through ideological prisms and ideological prisms are not helpful for doing research.”</p>
<p>“What Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch and Fusion GPS were doing during the campaign was the essence of free speech and political activity in the midst of a presidential election—looking for information about a presidential candidate, and disseminating it to their client in that context,” says Ted Boutrous, a member of the legal team defending the firm.</p>
<p>Republicans will stop at little to change the subject away from the question at the heart of Meuller’s probe—whether Trump and his team colluded with the Russians during the election, or sought to cover up that fact. The obvious danger is that they are laying the groundwork to remove Mueller entirely, or to curb or cut off funding for his investigation, warns Louis Michael Seidman, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. Questions about Fusion GPS and Steele are a distraction, he argues: “What we ought to care about is whether the President of the United States has violated the law, and is suited to serve in that office.”</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 11 Jan 2018 15:21:07 +0000229295 at http://prospect.orgEliza Newlin CarneyNew Year’s Resolutions for Democratshttp://prospect.org/article/new-year%E2%80%99s-resolutions-democrats
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<p><span class="dropcap">A</span>fter a grueling year in the political wilderness, Democrats see a ray of hope as they close out 2017, celebrating electoral wins in Virginia and Alabama, and honing their midterm attacks on the GOP’s wildly unpopular tax bill.</p>
<p>But lest Democrats wake up to a giant hangover next year, they would do well to make a few New Year’s resolutions before ladling out the holiday punch. Above all, they should take care not to fall into the same traps that have snarled the GOP.</p>
<p>Democrats have assailed President Trump and his allies for tearing down democratic norms, spreading falsehoods, and catering to elites. But progressives have struggled with their own destructive impulses, sounding troubling echoes of the disruptions on the right. Intra-party feuding, “antifa” violence, overwrought hyperbole, and secret political spending all threaten to drag Democrats off the high road.</p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">Democrats can’t beat Republicans if they start acting like them.</span> Their resolutions should include:</p>
<p><strong>Don’t Embrace Secret Money</strong>: In the Alabama Senate race, a mysterious super PAC dubbed Highway 31 <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/races/outside-spending?cycle=2018&amp;id=ALS1">spent $5.1 million</a> to help elect Democrat Doug Jones. Most of that money was spent “on credit” by three Democratic consulting firms, a maneuver that shielded donors’ identities until after the election. While technically legal, the arrangement violated the spirit of campaign-finance laws that require super PACs to fully disclose their donors. In early December, <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/11/secret-super-pac-backing-jones-exposed-alabama-senate-290502">Politico reported</a> that two leading Democratic super PACs—Senate Majority PAC and Priorities USA Action—were behind Highway 31. Democrats must have wanted to avert a backlash in deep red Alabama. But the ploy went against Democrats’ claim to support transparency in elections.</p>
<p>Even more secretive are several new anti-Trump groups, including the Indivisible Project, Our Revolution, and Majority Forward, that have been set up as tax-exempt organizations instead of as PACs. That means that they need not disclose their donors at all—<a href="http://prospect.org/article/should-%E2%80%98dark%E2%80%99-money-power-resistance-trump">raising questions</a> over whether “dark” money should power the resistance to Trump.</p>
<p><strong>Don’t Get Cozy with Billionaires:</strong> Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street speeches and high-dollar joint fundraising with the Democratic National Committee <a href="http://prospect.org/article/why-clintons-fundraising-prowess-cuts-both-ways">colored voters’ perceptions</a> of her as untrustworthy. She also <a href="http://prospect.org/article/why-clintons-fundraising-prowess-cuts-both-ways">failed to articulate</a> a clear political reform message, despite a platform that included sweeping democracy reforms. Democrats who have been busy <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/12/14/major-democratic-donors-launch-center-help-donors-get-smart-political-spending/949490001/">launching a new “advisory firm” for big donors</a> may invite similar critiques. The Republican Party’s embrace of billionaire contributors has <a href="http://prospect.org/article/gop%E2%80%99s-big-problem-big-money">backed the GOP into a legislative corner</a>, and <a href="http://prospect.org/article/bannons-revolution-about-power-and-money">unleashed forces</a> outside GOP leaders’ control. Democrats run the same risk if they spend more time huddling with big donors than listening to voters.</p>
<p><strong>Don’t Violate Democratic Norms: </strong>Not a day goes by when Democrats don’t assail Trump for tearing down democratic institutions and standards. But the September clashes between hate groups and counter-protesters at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville drew back the curtain on <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/the-rise-of-the-violent-left/534192/">leftist “antifa” organizers</a> who say violence is justified to combat right-wing authoritarianism. Trump exploited the violence, which violated the norms of tolerance for free speech and peaceful protest, to double down on his claim that the nationalists included “very fine people” and that both sides were to blame.</p>
<p><strong>Don’t Become the Party of No.</strong> Republicans focused so single-mindedly on opposing President Obama’s every move that they stopped generating any new ideas. That tactic left them empty-handed when they finally came to power. Democrats fixated on opposing Trump may win on the campaign trail, but they will blow their opportunity if they assume office with no consensus on policy solutions.</p>
<p><strong>Don’t Start a Civil War. </strong>Democrats’ many intra-party grievances <a href="http://prospect.org/article/wither-democrats-0">have been well documented.</a> Some of the party’s harshest internal critics will no doubt help Democrats stay on the high road. But reflexive harangues at the “establishment” over the perceived failings of 2016 look a lot like the populist attacks on Mitch McConnell by the Steve Bannon wing of the GOP.</p>
<p>Napoleon is credited with the maxim: <span class="pullquote-right">“Never interfere with your enemy when he is in the process of destroying himself.”</span> The internal party emails that have infuriated so many Democrats came to light because Russian hackers deliberately set out to sow discord—and Democrats fell right into their trap.</p>
<p><strong>Don’t Distort the Facts: </strong><em>The Washington Post </em>estimates that Trump has averaged 5.5 false or misleading claims per day—a tough milestone for any Democrat to top. Still, the<em> Post</em>’s “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/12/15/the-biggest-pinocchios-of-2017/?utm_term=.cf89ada95ce8">Biggest Pinocchios of 2017</a>” include three by Democrats and one by independent Senator Bernie Sanders. These include Sanders’s claim that “36,000 people will die yearly if Republicans repeal Obamacare,” and the statement by Senator Kamala Harris of California that “129 million people with preexisting conditions could be denied coverage” if the law were repealed. If Democrats want to continue taking Trump to task for his falsehoods, they had better stick with the facts themselves.</p>
<p><strong>Don’t Forget Your Principles. </strong>While Democrats are squabbling over whether to move to the left or to the center, Republicans have tacked so far to the right that Democrats need not reinvent themselves. The majority of voters already agree with the Democratic Party on a host of key policy issues. Most voters <a href="http://news.gallup.com/poll/206159/americans-tilt-toward-protecting-environment-alternative-fuels.aspx">want to protect the environment</a> and promote alternative fuels; <a href="http://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/221117/direction-american-public-gun-policy.aspx">support stricter gun-control</a> laws; want the government to <a href="http://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/221117/direction-american-public-gun-policy.aspx">ensure health-care coverage</a>; <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/26/few-americans-support-cuts-to-most-government-programs-including-medicaid/">oppose cuts</a> to Medicaid; and back <a href="http://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/197531/public-opinion-four-key-state-ballot-measures.aspx">raising the minimum wage</a> to $15 an hour. Soaring income inequality, which will only get worse under new GOP tax laws, hurts all Americans, whether they are rural working-class whites, voters of color, suburbanites, or city dwellers. In 2018, Democrats should simply be themselves. That’s what <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/20/how-to-beat-trump-2020-elections-generic-democrat-216121">Doug Jones did in Alabama.</a> All Democrats should resolve to follow his lead.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 21 Dec 2017 19:45:46 +0000229146 at http://prospect.orgEliza Newlin CarneyThe GOP’s Weapon of Suppression: Voter Purgeshttp://prospect.org/article/gop%E2%80%99s-weapon-suppression-voter-purges
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<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>he historic African American turnout that propelled Democrat Doug Jones to victory in Alabama’s Senate special election overcame decades of voter suppression in that state and around the country.</p>
<p>But GOP-authored voter restrictions continue to pile up, and increasingly Republicans <a href="https://thedailydemocracy.org/2017/12/08/new-marching-orders-for-vote-suppressors-target-registration-not-voter-id/">are branching beyond</a> such familiar tools as voter ID rules to an even more aggressive suppression tactic: Voter purges that wipe voters from the rolls altogether. Done in the name of combating fraud, such purges have stripped hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, New York, and elsewhere, prompting a rash of lawsuits by voting rights advocates who say eligible voters are being disenfranchised.</p>
<p>In January, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case that challenges Ohio’s practice of initiating the voter purge process for voters who have simply failed to show up to vote over a single election cycle. The case, <a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/husted-v-philip-randolph-institute/"><em>Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute</em></a>, hinges on whether Ohio’s law violates the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which bars the removal of a voter from the rolls “by reason of the person’s failure to vote.”</p>
<p>“I am deeply concerned that if the Supreme Court sides with Ohio in this case, we will see states taking a copy-cat approach, and taking steps to gut the NVRA and gut the voter rolls across the country,” says Kristen Clarke, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. In October, a lawsuit initiated by the Lawyers’ Committee forced the New York City Board of Elections to admit that it had <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/board-elections-admit-purged-200-000-voters-rolls-article-1.3586490">broken state and federal laws</a> by removing more than 200,000 voters from the city rolls before last year’s presidential primary.</p>
<p>Voter purges are nothing new, but the practice is drawing fresh notice for several reasons. The Ohio case asks the Supreme Court for the first time to closely scrutinize the voter removal language in the NVRA, which election lawyers say is not crystal clear. Kicking voters off the rolls in the name of combating fraud is also emerging as a key Trump Administration priority.</p>
<p>Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the de facto head of the president’s election “integrity” commission, sought to require proof of citizenship for voter registration in his home state, and may be trying to replicate that effort across the nation. The commission has demanded exhaustive voter data from the states, triggering several lawsuits, and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-white-houses-voter-fraud-commission-has-already-damaged-our-democracy/2017/07/18/a04f25d6-6b42-11e7-9c15-177740635e83_story.html?tid=ss_tw&amp;utm_term=.a5be8d21dcf5">possibly signaling</a> a national effort to match state lists with federal databases.</p>
<p>On the same day as the commission’s June data request, the Justice Department demanded details from 44 states on how they are complying with the NVRA, <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/department-of-justice-voter-purge_us_595d22b1e4b0da2c7326c38b">prompting speculation</a> that the administration plans to fish for an opening to sue states with messy voter rolls. The Justice Department has also reversed course in the Ohio case before the Supreme Court. Under President Obama, Justice sided with civil rights advocates challenging the Ohio law. <span class="pullquote-right">Trump’s Justice Department is now backing Ohio, arguing that the state’s voter law is needed to keep the rolls accurate and promote the integrity of elections.</span></p>
<p>This reversal is highly unusual, says Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who served in the department’s Civil Rights Division, which at the time opposed the Ohio law. The NVRA permits states to initiate removing voters from the rolls if election officials have evidence that the voter has moved, says Levitt. But the Ohio law allows the state to initiate action on the basis of non-voting alone, raising the “significant concern,” he argues, “that states will be free to toss people off the rolls without any evidence that they have become ineligible.”</p>
<p>The nation’s voter lists are <a href="http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_assets/2012/pewupgradingvoterregistrationpdf.pdf">notoriously error-riddled</a>, and Levitt acknowledges that maintaining accurate rolls is in everyone’s interests. But cleanup efforts must be careful and precise, says Levitt, who likened the process to surgery. The multi-state “Crosscheck” program championed by Kobach, for example, matches up state voter lists without adequate controls, and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/20/this-anti-voter-fraud-program-gets-it-wrong-over-99-of-the-time-the-gop-wants-to-take-it-nationwide/?utm_term=.a3bbbf8e8f6e">misidentifies large numbers of voters</a> as registered in more than one state. A more reputable data sharing project known as the <a href="https://www.nist.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2016/10/12/tgdc-pew-vip-and-eric-david-becker-v2.pdf">Electronic Registration Information Center</a> allows states to check their records against numerous government databases, resulting in fewer errors.</p>
<p>“It’s the difference between surgery in an operating room with a best-of-class surgeon, and surgery by your neighbor with a chain saw,” says Levitt of the difference between ERIC and Crosscheck. Indiana, one of 30 states to participate in Crosscheck, enacted a law that clears election officials to remove from the rolls anyone flagged by Crosscheck as registered in more than one state, prompting Common Cause Indiana and the ACLU <a href="https://thedailydemocracy.org/2017/10/31/lawsuit-indiana-using-kobachs-flawed-system-to-illegally-purge-rolls/">to sue</a>.</p>
<p>Civil rights advocates have also pushed back hard against an intimidation campaign by the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative group headed by anti-fraud activist J. Christian Adams, who serves on the Kobach commission. His group has sent <a href="https://publicinterestlegal.org/files/Sample-2017-notice.pdf">threatening letters</a> to state election officials, demanding the right to inspect voter rolls that it claims are inaccurate. A coalition of civil rights groups <a href="http://www.demos.org/press-release/civil-rights-groups-launch-national-effort-combat-alarming-voter-purge-attempt">last month set out to counter</a> what it called “an alarming voter purge campaign,” urging election officials to reject the group’s efforts and offering guidance.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-voter-fraud-commission-alec_us_5a29bfbde4b069ec48abff48">This month, Adams told</a> members of American Legislative Exchange Council, which has helped states write voter restriction laws: “Voter ID is an important thing, but it’s yesterday’s fight.” The bigger threat today, Adams told ALEC conferees, is “aliens who are getting on the rolls and aliens who are voting.” Registration, required in every state except North Dakota, is “the gateway” to voting, notes Levitt. Republicans appear bent on closing that gate.</p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 15 Dec 2017 14:35:37 +0000229098 at http://prospect.orgEliza Newlin CarneyTrump, Moore, and the Party of Menhttp://prospect.org/article/trump-moore-and-party-men
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<p><span class="dropcap">W</span>hile the rest of the world has its #MeToo moment, the Republican Party appears to be crawling back into the dark ages, when men charged with sexual misdeeds responded by defaming their accusers as liars.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/locals-were-troubled-by-roy-moores-interactions-with-teen-girls-at-the-gadsden-mall">predatory</a> Roy Moore, who may just win the Alabama special Senate election now that <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/gretchen-carlson-how-president-trump-became-sexual-harasser-in-chief">harasser-in-chief</a> Donald Trump has rallied behind him, has won the Republican National Committee’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/with-trumps-support-moore-could-gain-influence-in-washington/2017/12/04/02da209c-d917-11e7-b1a8-62589434a581_story.html?utm_term=.615666934634">seal of approval</a>. Having once said Moore should <a href="http://www.wsj.com/video/mcconnell-roy-moore-should-withdraw/0CF2357C-011E-4F2F-BDA0-856D93E84A8F.html">withdraw from the race</a>, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell <a href="http://time.com/5050655/roy-moore-mitch-mcconnell-trump/">now says</a> he will “let the people of Alabama make the call.” The only Republican senator not prevaricating or staying silent is the retiring Arizonan Jeff Flake, who <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/05/politics/jeff-flake-writes-doug-jones-check/index.html">has written a check</a> to Moore’s Democratic opponent, Doug Jones.</p>
<p>It’s an awkward spot for a party that heads into the midterms led by a president with approval ratings as low as <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trump_job_approval-6179.html">36 percent</a>. Republicans <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-generic-ballot-polls/">substantially trail</a> Democrats in generic ballot polls that ask voters which party they would support in a congressional election, and the GOP gender gap is wider than ever. <a href="https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2504">Fifty-eight percent</a> of women want Democrats to win the House, compared with 42 percent of men. The anti-Trump “resistance” that handed Democrats recent wins in Virginia and around the country, moreover, is heavily powered by female candidates and activists.</p>
<p>But the Republican playbook these days relies entirely on tapping the grievances of an increasingly narrow, white male base. Moore rejects as “malicious,” “completely false” and “a political farce” the accounts of the more than half-dozen women who say he dated or tried to date them as teenagers when he was in his thirties. He’s accused <em>The Washington Post</em>, which first reported the allegations, of political conspiracy. He’s also called Beverly Jones Nelson, one of two women who accused him of sexual assault, “a sensationalist heading a witch hunt.”</p>
<p>It’s the same strategy Trump successfully deployed last year following the release of the <em>Access Hollywood</em> tape on which <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/28/16710130/trump-says-access-hollywood-tape-fake">he bragged</a> that as a celebrity he could “do anything” to women, including “grab ‘em by the pussy.” Trump not only managed to survive politically, but actually turned the uproar over the tape to his advantage by playing on his most loyal voters’ anti-woman resentments. According to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/male-trump-voters-masculinity/503741/">one poll</a> released a month before Election Day, 41 percent of Trump’s supporters agreed “mostly” or “completely” with the statement: “These days society seems to punish men just for acting like men.”</p>
<p>“He actually in some ways really tapped into a sense of victimization among these men, that the progress we’ve seen in gender equality, the sensitivity to these sorts of comments and behaviors, the political correctness, was really unfair to men and was targeting men,” says Kelly Dittmar, a scholar at Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics. Dittmar says it’s too early to tell whether the recent wave of allegations involving sexual misconduct will trigger a political backlash, the way the Anita Hill controversy in 1992 ushered in a “Year of the Woman” that elected historic numbers of women to the House and Senate.</p>
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<p>Democratic women also have testified about the culture of harassment on Capitol Hill, and introduced legislation that would make it easier for victims to step forward and shed light on the secret settlements that lawmakers pay out. Those women, including several from the class of '92, have struggled to gain the high ground amid an outpouring of sexual misconduct charges that has forced a long list of high-profile executives and journalists out of their jobs.</p>
<p>Senate women led the push for the resignation of Senate Democrat Al Franken, which he announced Thursday folowing a string of misconduct allegations. Franken's annoucement came hard on the heels of the departure of House Democrat John Conyers of Michigan who also faces harassment allegations.</p>
<p>"I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party," Franken said on the Senate floor.</p>
<p>Indeed, Democrats may have the most to lose in the near term from the nation’s collective outbreak of anger over sexual misconduct. Conyers is unlikely to be replaced by a Republican in Michigan’s heavily Democratic 13th district, but Franken’s Senate seat could swing to a Republican should he step down. And Ruben Kihuen, another House Democrat <a href="https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/nevada/pressure-for-kihuen-to-resign-mounts-after-conyers-steps-down/">under pressure to step down</a> amid harassment allegations, represents Nevada’s 4th district, which Hillary Clinton won last year by less than 50 percent. Further revelations about Democrats in the growing harassment scandal could make it harder for the party to retake the House in 2018.</p>
<p>In the long term, though, the disrespect for women embodied by Trump, Moore, and now the entire Republican Party bodes poorly for the GOP. Trump, in particular, may discover that defaming women as liars comes with both a political and a legal cost. Summer Zervos, a former contestant on <em>The Apprentice</em>, is one of several women who has accused Trump of inappropriately touching her. Trump has called her and her other accusers liars, calling their allegations “false stories,” and now Zervos is suing him for defamation.</p>
<p>A New York judge will decide shortly whether the suit can go forward. If it does, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-may-face-a-reckoning-in-case-brought-by-female-accuser/2017/12/04/dd8f783a-d39b-11e7-b62d-d9345ced896d_story.html?utm_term=.0435c320c22d">legal experts say</a> Trump could face further suits, and potentially embarrassing testimony and <em>Apprentice</em> outtakes could go public during discovery. Trump may be forced to testify, as Bill Clinton was about Monica Lewinsky, leading to his impeachment on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice by the House. Trump’s endorsement of Roy Moore may be enough to help Moore over the finish line in deep-red Alabama. But if Moore wins, it will put Senate Republicans in a tough spot. As the party of Trump, Republicans may soon find that their perennial woman problem is about to get a whole lot worse. </p>
<p><em>This post has been updated.</em></p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 07 Dec 2017 14:41:48 +0000229055 at http://prospect.orgEliza Newlin CarneyInternet Ad Rules Bring Together Strange Bedfellowshttp://prospect.org/article/internet-ad-rules-bring-together-strange-bedfellows
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<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>he conservative backlash against proposals on Capitol Hill and at the Federal Election Commission to shed more light on internet political ads has been swift and predictable.</p>
<p>When the FEC <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/11/16/election-officials-move-closer-to-placing-new-rules-on-facebook-and-google/?utm_term=.84823030b074">moved unanimously</a> this month to clear the way for a rulemaking that would require small, online political ads to include disclaimers saying who paid for them, GOP election lawyer Dan Backer raised the alarm that such rules “will do nothing but keep law-abiding Americans away from political speech.” When lawmakers on Capitol Hill introduced a bipartisan bill to expand disclosure for online campaign ads, Institute for Free Speech President David Keating <a href="http://www.ifs.org/2017/10/19/center-for-competitive-politics-statement-on-warner-klobuchar-dark-legislation/">warned</a> that it “would shut off an indispensable outlet for small grassroots groups to get their message out.”</p>
<p>It’s the same line of attack that First Amendment champions on the right have deployed to tear down all but a few of the nation’s political money rules. But in the case of Russia’s interference in last year’s election, which spread disinformation via Facebook alone to 146 million Americans, conservatives’ knee-jerk alarmism may be falling on deaf ears. The Supreme Court has long upheld the principle that Americans should know who is paying for political ads. And a growing number of Republicans, alarmed by the seriousness of the threat posed by foreign election meddling, are joining in calls for new internet rules.</p>
<p>The FEC’s recent action was rare break from its habitual partisan paralysis, and a departure from precedent. Disclaimers identifying ad sponsors are required for political TV, radio, and web ads, but character-limited ads on digital platforms have been exempted. All three Republicans on the FEC, which is currently shy one commissioner, joined the agency’s one Democrat and one independent in voting to begin writing new internet rules.</p>
<p>“Foreign interference in U.S. elections is inimical to our nation’s interests and democratic values,” Republican commissioners Caroline Hunter, Lee Goodman, and Matthew Petersen said in a statement explaining their decision. “The need to prevent such interference is an issue that transcends partisan politics, and on which all Americans can agree.” <a href="https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/ELW-statement-on-FECs-opening-of-a-disclaimer-rulemaking.pdf">In her own statement</a>, Democratic commissioner Ellen Weintraub said that the agency’s “ability to shatter its usual gridlock and move forward shows the gravity of our current situation.”</p>
<p>Another sign that the usual far-right talking points are sounding stale this time is that <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/4077/cosponsors?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22honest+ads+act%22%5D%7D&amp;r=2">a half-dozen Republicans</a> have signed onto the House version of the Honest Ads Act, which like its Senate counterpart would require the largest digital platforms to publicly report details about political ads. The disclosures would mirror those required for TV stations, and would cover who paid for the ad, who was targeted, its cost and timing, and the ad itself. Like the FEC rules under consideration, the bill would also require disclaimers identifying ad sponsors.</p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">There’s still plenty of time for the FEC’s fragile consensus <a href="http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96030">to fall apart</a>, of course.</span> Congress is too distracted by tax legislation and spending disputes to take up internet ad legislation any time soon. Facebook, Google, and Twitter, the big three platforms targeted by the new rules, have also stopped short of endorsing the legislation, stressing instead the steps they are taking to regulate themselves—and their lobbyists may yet mount a full court press to kill the bill.</p>
<p>But the Senate’s leading opponent of campaign-finance regulation, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/09/06/poll-mitch-mcconnell-increasingly-unpopular-with-republican-voters/">lost clout within his own party</a>. And last year’s foreign election interference, which also has brought to light Russian attempts to hack American voting systems, as well as the failure of foreign agents to disclose their activities, have raised national security issues that the GOP traditionally champions. That makes efforts to regulate foreign disinformation on the internet a rare opportunity for the two parties to come together.</p>
<p>The FEC’s call for public comment on the question of internet regulation prompted 144,000 Americans to weigh in, both in stand-alone public comments, and on petitions circulated by progressive groups such as Credo Action, People for the American Way, Common Cause, and Public Citizen. The vast majority of public comments argued that FEC rules need to be updated to capture online political ads, which <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/brennan-center-comment-fec-internet-communication-disclaimers">hit $1.4 billion</a> last year—50 times what was spent in 2004.</p>
<p>Conservatives object that new internet restrictions would block ordinary Americans and small, grassroots groups from speaking freely in politics. <a href="http://www.ifs.org/2017/11/01/analysis-honest-ads-act-targets-americans-not-foreign-actors/">An analysis</a> by the Institute for Free Speech even raises the specter that the Honest Ads Act, for one, would impose the heavy hand of government on individual websites and email communications. But this line of argument conflates unpaid political discourse and communications, which are not even under discussion, with paid campaign ads. The legislation would apply only to the largest online platforms, and to political advertisers who spend $500 or more on online platforms that receive at least 50 million unique visitors in the U.S. per month.</p>
<p>The bill’s authors deliberately tailored the legislation as narrowly as possible, according to Rachel Cohen, a spokeswoman for Virginia Democrat Mark Warner, who wrote the Senate version of the proposal with Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar and Arizona Republican John McCain. “It was intended to be the lightest possible touch,” <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/should-washington-begin-regulating-facebook-some-lawmakers-say-yes-n823491">Cohen told NBC News</a>. “When you go further in legislation, it gets more difficult.” Conservative critics will continue to howl about government bureaucrats out to silence average Americans. But tech titans, not government agencies, seem to control political discourse these days—and even Republicans are looking for new solutions.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 30 Nov 2017 15:10:43 +0000229005 at http://prospect.orgEliza Newlin CarneyBlowing Up Democracy and Charities in One Fell Swoophttp://prospect.org/article/blowing-democracy-and-charities-one-fell-swoop
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<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>here’s a great deal wrong with the House-passed tax overhaul bill, but its most heinous provision may be one that effectively blows up both the campaign-finance laws and the charitable sector at the same time.</p>
<p>By essentially repealing the so-called Johnson Amendment, a tax provision that bars charities from engaging in partisan politics, the House legislation frees up big donors to funnel even more unlimited, undisclosed money into campaigns, and, for the first time, to deduct that money from their taxes. The bill also threatens the credibility and viability of charitable groups, and would drastically reduce charitable giving—even as it robs education, housing, and health-care assistance from working families who invariably will turn to charities for help.</p>
<p>The Senate tax bill does not repeal the Johnson Amendment, enacted in 1954 at the urging of then–Senate Minority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, and thousands of charitable and religious leaders are now lobbying to ensure that it stays in the final legislation. The list of those lined up against the repeal is impressive: <a href="https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/sites/default/files/articles/community-letter-in-support-of-nonpartisanship-5-12-update.pdf">5,500 charities and foundations</a>, <a href="https://www.faith-voices.org/intro#readletter">4,200 faith leaders</a>, and <a href="http://bjconline.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/11.01.17-Faith-Organization-Letter-Opposing-Politicization-of-Houses-of-Worship.pdf">more than 100</a> religious and denominational organizations.</p>
<p>So who wants it? <span class="pullquote-right"><a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/11/republicans-want-to-let-the-koch-brothers-political-donations-tax-deductible/">Far-right Christian groups</a> were the first to convince authors of the House bill to let churches alone engage in endorsements.</span> But that measure was expanded at the last minute to include all charities, suggesting that big GOP donors, who would like nothing better than to deduct the big donations they funnel through nonprofits to influence elections, are gunning for it, too.</p>
<p>The repeal’s backers say it <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/360727-protecting-free-speech-rights-through-tax-reform">protects free speech and religious liberty</a>, but these are red herrings. Churches and charities are perfectly free to endorse candidates, they just can’t do it with tax-free money. The government’s bargain with such groups is: We will exempt you from taxes and let you raise tax-deductible contributions, if you stay out of partisan politics. This protects charities from government meddling, and ensures that taxpayers aren’t forced to subsidize endorsements of candidates they oppose.</p>
<p>Campaign-finance watchdogs hate the repeal because it would create incentives for all political money to flow into unrestricted, secret channels. Right now, super PACs may raise unlimited money, but they at least must disclose its sources. Social-welfare and trade groups may raise limitless contributions, which they need not disclose, and they spend hundreds of millions on campaigns under the guise of promoting issues—but at least that money is not tax-deductible.</p>
<p>The House bill creates the very real possibility that political players will create sham “charities” and “churches” to rake in massive, undisclosed, and now tax-deductible campaign donations that will become the new normal in American elections. The campaign-finance system may seem like a world without rules today, but the freewheeling realm of super PACs and politically active social-welfare groups will look like a paragon of accountability and transparency if charities become the new vehicles of choice for political spending.</p>
<p>Even worse, say nonprofit-sector leaders, the bill would erode the public’s trust in charities, lumping them in with unpopular parties and candidates, and driving down contributions. “Charitable nonprofits don’t want to be dragged into the toxic political wasteland,” <a href="https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/article/last-minute-change-tax-reform-bill-hardens-nonprofit-opposition">declared Tim Delaney</a>, president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits, when the House unveiled its revised tax proposal earlier this month. Delaney and his allies warn that the House plan would also make churches and charities vulnerable to pressure from politicians.</p>
<p>The House tax bill purports to limit abuses by requiring charities to engage in politics only minimally and “in the ordinary course” of their normal activities. But this ill-defined standard would force the Internal Revenue Service, which has done virtually nothing to enforce political abuses by tax-exempts in any case, into the impossible role of charitable referee. If voters begin to see charities as quasi-political groups, moreover, <span class="pullquote-right">Congress could face pressure to eliminate the deductibility of charitable contributions altogether.</span></p>
<p>All this comes on top of <a href="http://www.thenonprofittimes.com/news-articles/senate-tax-bill-keep-johnson-amendment-intact/">several other provisions</a> in both the House and Senate tax bills that are expected to substantially reduce charitable giving. Both bills expand the standard tax deduction, which nonprofit sector advocates say would reduce charitable giving incentives for all but the wealthiest families. The House bill removes the estate tax, which has historically spurred charitable giving. The Senate bill retains the estate tax, but doubles the exemption amount—still threatening charitable donations, but to a lesser degree. The House bill would reduce charitable giving in 2018 by $12 billion to $20 billion, <a href="http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/house-tax-bill-not-very-charitable-nonprofits">estimates the Tax Policy Center</a>.</p>
<p>This year marks the centennial of the charitable tax deduction, which was first written into the tax code in 1917. Instead of celebrating, the nation’s charities are fighting for their lives. The GOP tax plan not only slashes services to average Americans to underwrite tax cuts for the super-rich, but also makes it harder for churches and other charities to pick up the slack. By erasing the firewall between charity and politics, the House bill doubles the damage. As Delaney, of the National Council of Nonprofits, told <em>The American Prospect</em>: “This is dangerous for democracy, and very harmful to the 501(c)(3) community.”</p>
</div></div></div>Wed, 22 Nov 2017 17:22:45 +0000228970 at http://prospect.orgEliza Newlin CarneyGo Ahead. Make Clinton’s Dayhttp://prospect.org/article/go-ahead-make-clinton%E2%80%99s-day
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<p><span class="dropcap">A</span>ttorney General Jeff Sessions has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/sessions-likely-to-be-questioned-about-trump-campaign-dealings-with-russians-at-house-judiciary-hearing/2017/11/13/bc20b7fc-c894-11e7-aa96-54417592cf72_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_se">put the brakes on</a> speculation that he will designate a special counsel to investigate Hillary Clinton—at least for now. Republican attacks on Clinton, however, will surely continue.</p>
<p>Republicans are having great fun <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/11/15/fox-news-shepherd-smith-debunks-his-networks-hillary-clinton-scandal-story-infuriates-viewers/?utm_term=.1d10bb68ac42">rehashing conspiracy theories</a> about Clinton’s supposed role in a uranium deal with the Russians, and casting her campaign’s run-of-the-mill <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/30/politics/sanders-clinton-collusion/index.html">opposition research</a> and <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-clinton-the-dnc-and-the-law-1510521378">joint fundraising activities</a> as somehow illegal. Democrats and watchdogs warn that if Sessions caves to President Trump’s demands for an investigation, he will corrode the Justice Department’s political independence.</p>
<p>But Republicans’ renewed anti-Clinton fervor will do more to hurt the GOP than Democrats in the long run. As veteran GOP political consultant Ed Rogers succinctly put it: “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/11/14/a-clinton-special-counsel-wont-help-republicans-in-2018/?utm_term=.80458a171d0e">Clinton is irrelevant</a>.” The more time and money Republicans waste on Clinton investigations, the longer they put off the work of governing. Now in power but bankrupt of ideas or accomplishments, Republicans can no longer win by simply attacking the opposition.</p>
<p>Even before such a probe has been authorized, the sudden push to investigate Clinton by Trump his allies is widely seen as <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/04/opinions/trumps-bogus-clinton-allegations-eisen-wertheimer-opinion/index.html">a transparent bid</a> to distract from special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s probe, which seems to turn up <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-secret-correspondence-between-donald-trump-jr-and-wikileaks/545738/">more Russia-Trump campaign links</a> every day.</p>
<p>But if Republicans want to spend all their time rehashing Clinton controversies, Democrats have little reason to stop them. The George W. Bush administration spent five years investigating supposed voter fraud, and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washington/12fraud.html">ended up concluding</a> what voting rights advocates had said all along: that widespread fraud is virtually nonexistent. Similarly, any serious investigation of Clinton’s State Department or campaign dealings would likely backfire on the GOP. That’s because, like so many Trump team claims, the case against Clinton is built on thin air.</p>
<p>Take the allegation that millions contributed to the Clinton Foundation somehow persuaded Clinton as secretary of state to sell “a fifth of our uranium” to Russia, as Tucker Carlson claimed on Fox last month. <em>The Washington Post</em> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/10/31/the-repeated-incorrect-claim-that-russia-obtained-20-percent-of-our-uranium/?utm_term=.32fa34720558">calls this assertion “simply absurd.”</a></p>
<p>At issue is the 2010 sale of a Canadian company called Uranium One, which had mining rights in the U.S., to Russia’s nuclear regulatory agency, known as Rosatom. Republicans smell a rat because several Uranium One investors, including mining magnate Frank Guistra, had showered money on the Clinton Foundation. The Clintons <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/news/clinton_foundations_missteps_point_to_broader_problem-241644-1.html">deserve plenty of criticism</a> for mixing their charitable and political activities, but the notion of a Uranium One quid pro quo <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/04/27/back-to-basic-facts-in-latest-hillary-clinton-scandal-story/?utm_term=.0888e81c6b7d">has been thoroughly debunked</a>—even by Fox News’s only fair and balanced news anchor, Shepard Smith.</p>
<p>For starters, the State Department was only one of several agencies to approve the deal, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/04/opinions/trumps-bogus-clinton-allegations-eisen-wertheimer-opinion/index.html">there’s evidence that</a> Clinton wasn’t involved at all in the decision. Guistra, moreover, sold his interests in Uranium One three years before the Russia deal even took place. And the deal involved not 20 percent of actual U.S. uranium, as Republicans claim, but of American production capacity. Seven years later, Uranium One’s share of U.S. production capacity has now shrunk to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/10/31/the-repeated-incorrect-claim-that-russia-obtained-20-percent-of-our-uranium/?utm_term=.5b78656e9150">a mere 2.3 percent</a>.</p>
<p>What about the claim that the Clinton campaign colluded with the Russians? It’s true that Democratic lawyer Marc Elias, representing the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/clinton-campaign-dnc-paid-for-research-that-led-to-russia-dossier/2017/10/24/226fabf0-b8e4-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html?utm_term=.02845a4178d9">retained a Washington firm called Fusion GPS</a>, to do opposition research on Trump. Fusion in turn hired former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who produced an unsubstantiated dossier purporting to show Trump’s Russia ties.</p>
<p>But proving Clinton-Russia collusion is a tough sell, given there were no actual Russians involved—just a Washington, D.C., firm and a British ex-spy. In fact, Fusion GPS first started digging up dirt on Trump at the behest of one of his (unnamed) GOP primary opponents. The Democrats went after information <em>about </em>Russia, which was doing its best to block Clinton’s election. Team Trump, by contrast, sought information <em>from </em>Russia, then covered its tracks. <span class="pullquote-right">Paying an opposition researcher is standard practice in campaigns. Secretly meeting with foreign adversaries is not.</span></p>
<p>Also standard practice, for better or worse, is the joint fundraising that goes on between political candidates and parties. Republicans lobbied long and hard to convince the Supreme Court, in a 2014 case <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/11/15/21255/modern-history-campaign-finance-watergate-citizens-united">known as <em>McCutcheon v. FEC</em></a>, to lift the aggregate limits on individual donations to political parties, creating a massive loophole that lets big donors sidestep contribution limits and plow millions into joint fundraising committees. These committees let candidates and parties raise money together in one account, then divvy up the proceeds.</p>
<p>Now conservative <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-clinton-the-dnc-and-the-law-1510521378">champions of deregulation are shocked</a>—shocked!—that the Clinton team and the DNC were pocketing big money through just such a joint fundraising agreement. Never mind that Trump, too, set up an identical joint fundraising arrangement with the Republican National Committee. The Democratic and Republican party committees that elect House and Senate candidates also raise money jointly with lawmakers on Capitol Hill as a matter of course.</p>
<p>Yes, Democratic Party organizer Donna Brazile <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774">has accused the DNC</a> of playing favorites with Clinton before the primary. The DNC set up a joint committee with Bernie Sanders, too, but it only raised a token amount. <a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-updates-trump-tweets-donna-brazile-rigged-htmlstory.html">Trump has tweeted</a> that Clinton’s deal with the DNC violated campaign finance and money laundering laws, and that Justice should investigate. But it’s Democratic Party rules, not campaign-finance laws, that bar the DNC from meddling in primaries.</p>
<p>As a candidate, Clinton could not shake the appearance problems created by <a href="http://prospect.org/article/why-clintons-fundraising-prowess-cuts-both-ways">her many ethics blind spots</a>—her Wall Street speeches, her emails, her Clinton Foundation ties, her high-dollar fundraisers. But while all this fueled plenty of breathless media coverage, and multiple federal and congressional investigations, it turns out that bad political judgment is not actually a crime. Republicans who insist otherwise, including <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/10/24/house-launches-two-new-investigfaioginvestigations-obama-administrations-approval-uranium-sale-russi/794175001/">those on Capitol Hill</a> investigating Uranium One and Clinton emails, will have little to show for themselves.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 16 Nov 2017 13:59:51 +0000228940 at http://prospect.orgEliza Newlin CarneyDemocracy Is in Shambles -- or Is It?http://prospect.org/article/democracy-shambles-or-it
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<p><span class="dropcap">I</span>t would be easy to conclude one year after Donald Trump’s election that American democracy is in shambles.</p>
<p>Trump’s assaults on press freedoms, judicial independence, and democratic norms are unprecedented in an American president. His administration has set the tone for <a href="http://prospect.org/article/team-trump%E2%80%99s-travel-travails">self-dealing and ethics violations</a> at the highest levels of government. And the U.S. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/06/30/america-has-abandoned-its-role-as-a-global-leader-says-a-top-u-s-ally/?utm_term=.8374f0169926">has abandoned</a> its traditional leadership role promoting accountability, transparency, and liberal governance internationally, just when <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2017">democracy is on the wane</a> around the world.</p>
<p>Yet for all that, the one-year anniversary of Trump’s election has also shed light on the resilience of American democratic institutions and civic life, and on some silver linings. The nation’s democracy stress test has galvanized <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/how-progressive-activists-are-leading-the-trump-resistance-w499221">a wave of activists and candidates</a> to enter the public square for the first time, and prompted a state-level push for new ethics, campaign finance and transparency laws, even as Washington remains mired in gridlock.</p>
<p>There’s still plenty for democracy advocates to worry about. The nation remains <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2017/10/24/political-typology-reveals-deep-fissures-on-the-right-and-left/">increasingly tribal, polarized, and suspicious</a> of public institutions. Trump has done his best to widen the growing gulf between educated, urban elites, and minority voters, on the one hand, and less educated, white working class and rural voters on the other. The political parties are at a low point—the GOP caught in a civil war, the Democrats squabbling over what comes next.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, crises of governance have a way of setting the table for new ideas, and the magnitude of threat posed by Trump is prompting even some Republicans to mull reforms. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, of course, will never abandon his absolute opposition to all political money restrictions. But Robert Mueller’s steadily advancing probe of Russia’s interference in last year’s election has aroused GOP national security concerns. Republican Senator Charles Grassley, of Iowa, <a href="http://prospect.org/article/foreign-influence-peddling-bill-comes-due">has authored legislation</a> that would broaden disclosures under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Arizona Republican John McCain has <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/18/facebook-ad-disclosure-bill-243914">cosponsored a bill</a> that would shed light on who pays for internet political ads.</p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">“Almost every person involved in the process thinks the process is not only broken, it’s dysfunctional,” said campaign-finance reform advocate Meredith McGehee</span> at a <a href="http://www.commoncause.org/issues/more-democracy-reforms/blueprint-for-a-great-democracy/">Common Cause conference Tuesday</a> on advancing integrity in American democracy. McGehee, who handles policy and strategy for the bipartisan democracy reform group Issue One, said she no longer has to convince lawmakers, regardless of party, that the system is broken. The Trump presidency has underscored the glaring need for ethics and lobbying fixes, she noted.</p>
<p>The Trump administration’s ethics travails have also prompted state legislatures to pursue a wave of new ethics reforms outside the Beltway, Common Cause President Karen Hobert Flynn said at Tuesday’s conference. South Dakota <a href="http://www.thestate.com/news/article183000401.html">will vote next year</a> on a ballot initiative that would amend the state constitution to create an independent ethics commission. Missouri activists <a href="http://cleanmissouri.org/solution/">are backing a ballot initiative</a> that would toughen state ethics, lobbying and campaign finance rules. Trump’s failure to release his tax returns, going against decades of tradition, has also prompted <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/14/opinions/state-laws-requiring-tax-return-disclosure-legal-tribe-painter-eisen/index.html">dozens of states to pursue</a> legislation that would require any presidential candidate to release his or her tax returns to get on the ballot in that state.</p>
<p>The outlook for democracy reforms also brightened Tuesday when Democrats, who have led the charge for ethics, lobbying, and campaign-finance changes, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/07/politics/2017-us-election-highlights/index.html">decisively beat Republicans</a> in election contests around the country, including in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races. Virginia Democrats also made substantial gains in the legislature, led in part by a wave of first-time women candidates. More than a dozen Virginia candidates endorsed by Every Voice, which backs campaign finance changes, <a href="http://www.everyvoice.org/press-release/virginia-winners-pledge-money-politics-reform">won their state legislative races</a> and have pledged to push for legislation to get big money out of politics. Virginia has no campaign-finance limits, and the recent elections <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/record-shattering-virginia-fundraising-leaves-candidates-neck-and-neck-in-money-race/2017/10/31/6455d518-be38-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html?utm_term=.495162c7ee08">shattered fundraising and spending records</a> there.</p>
<p>Democrats’ takeover of the legislature in Washington state, thanks to a special election win by Democrat Manka Dhingra, <a href="http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/nov/07/how-democrats-win-to-take-control-of-washington-se/">sets the stage for enactment</a> of a stalled bill that would require more disclosure from politically active tax-exempt groups. Also in Washington state, all three candidates for city office running under <a href="http://prospect.org/article/collecting-campaign-cash-homeless">a new Seattle law</a> built on democracy vouchers won their contests.</p>
<p>There’s no guarantee that Democrats will retain their momentum through the 2018 midterms, or that even if they do, democracy fixes or more meaningful checks on Trump will follow. But for better or worse, Trump’s deep unpopularity has left him frustrated and stymied on several fronts. The courts have imposed some checks on Trump, and Mueller’s investigation may yet call his administration to account. But the ultimate check on presidential abuses lies with voters. Trump’s erratic and divisive presidency has alarmed voters, but it has also awakened them. That may spell better days for democracy ahead.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 09 Nov 2017 14:27:32 +0000228887 at http://prospect.orgEliza Newlin CarneyForeign Influence Peddling Bill Comes Duehttp://prospect.org/article/foreign-influence-peddling-bill-comes-due
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<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>he indictments of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates have triggered a long-overdue reckoning with K Street’s rampant disregard for the laws that require lobbyists representing foreign interests to publicly disclose their activities.</p>
<p>Foreign agents on K Street and on Capitol Hill are anxiously wondering who’s next, and <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/30/manafort-lobbyists-wakeup-call-215763" target="_blank">are bracing</a> for new regulations, tougher enforcement, or both. The renewed focus on the disclosure law, known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act, also spotlights FARA’s potential as a potent tool to fight political disinformation campaigns by Russia or other foreign actors.</p>
<p>FARA abuses could leave K Street with an even worse black eye than the one delivered by the Jack Abramoff scandal in 2005 and 2006, <a href="https://lobbyinginstitute.com/2017/08/17/are-shadow-lobbyists-flynn-manafort-todays-abramoff/" target="_blank">warns Paul Miller</a>, president of the National Institute for Lobbying and Ethics, who <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress-lobbying/u-s-lobbying-trade-group-urges-congress-to-revamp-disclosure-laws-idUSKBN1D029Y" target="_blank">has called on Congress</a> to act quickly to enact tougher enforcement rules. Democratic super-lawyer Tony Podesta <strong>(</strong>brother of John, Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign chairman) <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/31/tony-podesta-lobbyists-mueller-manafort-244389" target="_blank">has already stepped down</a>, following the disclosure that his firm, along with Mercury Public Affairs, received some $2 million from offshore accounts run by Manafort and Gates.</p>
<p>FARA violations are only one part of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/10/30/the-paul-manafort-and-rick-gates-indictment-annotated/?utm_term=.27faf01d70a0" target="_blank">12-count indictment</a> handed down against Manafort and Gates by special counsel Robert S. Mueller, which also includes charges of conspiracy, money laundering, and making false statements. But it’s Mueller’s FARA-related indictments that have panicked K Street: The documents allege that Manafort and Gates, who have pled not guilty, paid for lobbying work on behalf former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his party but failed to make the required disclosures, and lied to the Justice Department to cover up their activities.</p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">For years, lobbying shops large and small have openly flouted FARA disclosure rules amid lax Justice Department enforcement, even as they scooped up millions <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/07/14/19930/rape-murder-famine-and-21-million-k-street-pr" target="_blank">from human rights violators like South Sudan</a>. </span>Now the bill may come due.</p>
<p><a href="http://prospect.org/article/lobbying-foreign-interests-and-not-reporting-it" target="_blank">Two figures close to President Trump</a> are among those who may have violated FARA rules, and who will be closely watched as the Mueller investigation unfolds. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, registered only belatedly to disclose lobbying work he did on behalf of Turkey. Trump campaign aide Corey Lewandowski may have violated FARA when he set up a meeting during the presidential transition with a Mexican billionaire at Mar-a-Lago, according to Public Citizen. The group has called for an investigation.</p>
<p>First enacted in 1938 as a tool to combat Nazi propaganda, FARA has suffered from an “unacceptable” lack of compliance, according to a <a href="https://oig.justice.gov/press/2016/2016-09-07.pdf" target="_blank">federal Inspector General report</a> released last year that in part blamed the Justice Department’s inadequate resources and lack of subpoena power. Mueller’s move against Manafort and Gates is only the eighth criminal indictment for a FARA violation since the 1960s.</p>
<p>“It is a poorly kept secret that people have been trying to avoid FARA registration over the past several decades,” says Joshua Ian Rosenstein, an attorney at Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein &amp; Birkenstock. Rosenstein predicts that a wave of retroactive registrations and requests for FARA guidance will flood the Justice Department. Some “nefarious actors” have ignored the rules, Rosenstein acknowledges, but others simply failed to grasp that FARA covers more activities, such as public relations and media consulting, than domestic lobbying disclosure rules.</p>
<p>A loophole in the law also has enabled lobbyists to register under the Lobbying Disclosure Act and not FARA when they represent foreign commercial interests, as opposed to foreign governments. But LDA disclosures are less comprehensive, and some foreign firms are stand-ins for foreign governments. <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/31/tony-podesta-lobbyists-mueller-manafort-244389" target="_blank">The work done by Podesta and Mercury</a> and paid for by Manafort and Gates, for example, was for an ostensibly independent nonprofit called the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine that was actually controlled by the Ukrainian president.</p>
<p>Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa <a href="https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/sen-grassley-rep-johnson-introduce-bill-shine-light-foreign-influences" target="_blank">introduced legislation this week</a> that would close that loophole and give the Justice Department subpoena power when investigating FARA violations. Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson has introduced a companion measure in the House. Democratic Senators Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois also have introduced separate bills to buttress FARA enforcement.</p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">Congress isn’t passing many bills these days, but even without legislation, Mueller’s recent indictments may lead to a culture shift on K Street. </span>The renewed spotlight on FARA also underscores the potential for that law to help combat propaganda from Russia and elsewhere. </p>
<p>This week, <a href="https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/sen-grassley-rep-johnson-introduce-bill-shine-light-foreign-influences" target="_blank">lawmakers grilled</a> Facebook, Google, and Twitter on their role disseminating Russian disinformation, and Democrats have rallied behind <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/10/19/558847414/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-honest-ads-act" target="_blank">legislation</a> to boost internet ad disclosure. But new internet rules could be tough to enact, and have raised First Amendment concerns in some quarters. By contrast, FARA offers a ready-made tool to sanction foreign propaganda.</p>
<p>Much of the false content placed on Twitter and Facebook last year was created by RT, the Russian news agency. The Justice Department has asked RT to register under FARA, according to RT officials, and a Kremlin spokesman <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-06/russia-threatens-to-hit-back-against-u-s-media-for-restrictions">threatened</a> that Russia declined to rule out “reciprocal actions” against U.S. media outlets. FARA exempts legitimate news outlets but not government-controlled media. “There’s nothing in FARA that prevents people from speaking. It merely requires transparency,” says Brookings Institution senior fellow James Kirchik, who argues that RT must register under FARA <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2017/09/22/why-russias-rt-should-register-as-an-agent-of-a-foreign-government/" target="_blank">as a matter of law</a>. Indeed, last year’s Russian propaganda campaign is precisely what FARA was created to combat.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 02 Nov 2017 14:31:54 +0000228843 at http://prospect.orgEliza Newlin CarneyOn Election Security, Feds Flounder While States Make Strideshttp://prospect.org/article/election-security-feds-flounder-while-states-make-strides
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<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>he debate over the Russian election interference and American election security is a case study in the utter dysfunctionality of Beltway politics. By contrast, a number of states have already embarked on practical, problem-solving innovations in securing the ballot in future elections.</p>
<p>On the national stage, President Trump’s “election integrity” commission has careened from one controversy to another, taking steps that actually threaten to undermine ballot security. Outside the spotlight, state election officials <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/14/us/voting-russians-hacking-states-.html?_r=0">are quietly taking steps</a> to respond to the Russian threat and upgrade American election systems with better machines, more accurate voter rolls, and firewalls against hacking.</p>
<p>The state-level picture is not all rosy, of course, and plenty of Republican statehouses have moved in the wrong direction with ill-advised voting restrictions that threaten to keep voters from the polls. But when it comes to the Russia threat, many state administrators have managed to tune out the political bickering and pursue public-private collaborations that involve federal officials, academics, cybersecurity experts, and even tech giants like Google and Facebook. Consider:</p>
<ul><li>Colorado <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/17/colorado-post-election-audits-cybersecurity-240631">will soon become the first state</a> to roll out a statewide election security measure known as a “risk limiting” audit, a type of post-election audit that cross checks a sampling of paper records against electronic vote tallies, and that is considered the gold standard among cybersecurity experts.</li>
<li>Rhode Island <a href="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/video/15f50520d039c5f1?projector=1">has increased its information technology staff</a> by 40 percent, recently convened a cybersecurity summit for more than 100 municipal election officials, and has started implementing automatic voter registration to improve the accuracy of its voter rolls. The Rhode Island legislature has also approved a new requirement for risk-limiting election audits in that state.</li>
<li>West Virginia’s secretary of state <a href="http://editions.lib.umn.edu/electionacademy/2017/10/13/electionlineweekly-on-partnership-between-west-virginia-sos-air-national-guard/">has brought on board a cybersecurity expert</a> from the state’s Air National Guard to help protect its election systems from outside intrusion.</li>
<li>New York Governor Andrew Cuomo <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/cuomo-order-review-n-y-voting-cyber-security-article-1.3261068">has ordered a top-to-bottom review</a> of election-related cybersecurity efforts in the state.</li>
<li>Virginia has <a href="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/video/15f50520d039c5f1?projector=1">decertified all its paper voting machines</a>, and is replacing them with new systems that facilitate audits by creating a voter-verifiable paper trail. The state has also created a new position for a digital security expert and has upgraded its software system.</li>
</ul><p>Helping facilitate such efforts is the Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency created by the 2002 Help America Vote Act. The EAC, which marks its 15th year in existence this month, and which Republicans have repeatedly tried to defund and shutter, is coming into its own after a bumpy history that included a stretch without a single commissioner on board.</p>
<p>EAC officials are working closely with the National Conference of State Legislatures, and with a “Defending Digital Democracy” project launched in July at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, to bring election officials together with tech experts, business leaders and other election stakeholders. Facebook and Google, under fire and possibly facing new regulations for their role facilitating Russian disinformation campaigns, are among those advising state election officials on how to guard against the types of threats they daily face.</p>
<p>“We can’t just ask local election officials to protect their systems on their own, or state officials to protect their systems on their own,” says EAC chairman Matthew Masterson. “It has to come from local, state, federal, the private sector as well as academia. It’s all part of a coordinated response.”</p>
<p>One outcome of the Belfer project will be a playbook for how to improve cybersecurity, using simulations not unlike those conducted by national security officials. The EAC has also been working with the Department of Homeland Security, which in January declared the nation’s election systems part of the nation’s critical infrastructure, to facilitate communication with the states. Many state election administrators were irate to learn only after the fact the details of Russian hacking efforts that had been known to intelligence officials for months.</p>
<p>The EAC and the National Institute of Standards and Technology also recently announced the first new technical standards in more than a decade to guide voting machine manufacturers. These voluntary standards have already been embraced by all but three states, and are expected to be finalized by early next year. States are in desperate need of new technologies as their voting machines, many purchased with HAVA money 15 years ago, near obsolescence.</p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">The challenge for state and local election officials, as always, is how to pay for it all.</span> HAVA came with a $4 billion federal assist. The Trump administration not only has no plans to boost state funding, but is actively undermining the states. The Trump “voter integrity” commission continues to demand vast amounts of voter data from the states, despite lawsuits that contend the demand violates privacy laws in many states, and puts voter information at risk.</p>
<p>Under fire from its inception, the Trump commission <a href="https://www.scribd.com/article/361881067/Conflict-Mounts-Inside-Voting-Fraud-Commission-In-The-Wake-Of-Child-Porn-Arrest">has now been roiled</a> by the arrest of a staff member on charges of possessing child pornography, and increasingly loud complaints from two of its Democratic members that the commission has failed to inform them of what it’s doing, when it will release its report, and even when it will next meet. <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/10/trump-election-commissioners-voter-database-is-a-ripe-target-for-hackers/">There’s also new evidence</a> that a voter database masterminded by the commission’s vice chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, is riddled with errors and subject to security risks.</p>
<p>The states have no silver bullet to secure American elections. But at least state and local officials are making a good-faith effort to ensure the sanctity of the vote. The same can’t be said of their federal counterparts.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 26 Oct 2017 13:44:42 +0000228791 at http://prospect.orgEliza Newlin CarneyBannon’s Revolution Is About Power -- and Moneyhttp://prospect.org/article/bannons-revolution-about-power-and-money
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<p>Former White House strategist Steve Bannon speaks with Fox News host Sean Hannity</p>
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<p><span class="dropcap">L</span>ike sharks sensing blood in the water, conservative political operatives have set out to cash in on the mounting anger among both populist Republican voters and big GOP donors, sometimes pulling in big salaries for themselves while doing little to help candidates or elected officials.</p>
<p>The Republican National Committee’s <a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article179293446.html">record $100 million haul</a> so far this year, a take fueled by low-dollar donors loyal to President Trump, has raised GOP hopes of a windfall on the far right. In some cases, as with the RNC’s swelling coffers, this will assist Trump. But some GOP operatives raising money off Trump’s name are actually backing candidates whom he opposes, or simply lining their own pockets as they stoke GOP extremism and infighting.</p>
<p>Take Citizens for Trump, which despite its name <a href="A%2520Group%2520Called%2520Citizens%2520For%2520Trump%2520Is%2520Raising%2520Money%2520%E2%80%94%2520But%2520Not%2520Always%2520For%2520Trump%E2%80%99s%2520Candidates">endorsed Christian rightist Roy Moore</a> in the GOP Alabama Senate primary, even as Trump publicly backed Moore’s opponent, Luther Strange. A mysterious group that has filed no public disclosures with the Federal Election Commission, Citizens for Trump is also eyeing contests in Florida and Ohio, and <a href="A%2520Group%2520Called%2520Citizens%2520For%2520Trump%2520Is%2520Raising%2520Money%2520%E2%80%94%2520But%2520Not%2520Always%2520For%2520Trump%E2%80%99s%2520Candidates">told <em>BuzzFeed</em></a> that GOP divisions might once again place it at odds with Trump.</p>
<p>Another group that <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/indexpend.php?cycle=2016&amp;cmte=C00618876">spent $21 million</a> to support Trump in last year’s election, Rebuilding America Now, has raised more than $1 million this year but spent zero on contributions to candidates or campaign expenditures. A super PAC that faces no contribution limits, the group <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Pro-Trump+Super+PAC+Paying+Executives+a+Fortune+for+Long+Shot+Challenges+to+Maxine+Waters+%26+Debbie+Wasserman+Schultz&amp;ie=utf-8&amp;oe=utf-8">has spent hundreds of thousands</a> on travel, meals and fat salaries for its chief organizers, both former Trump campaign aides. This includes $385,000 in the first six months of this year for Laurance Gay, and $210,000 for Kenneth McKay, <a href="https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?cycle=2018&amp;two_year_transaction_period=2018&amp;data_type=processed&amp;committee_id=C00618876&amp;min_date=01%2F01%2F2017&amp;max_date=12%2F31%2F2018&amp;line_number=F3X-21B">both for “political strategy consulting.”</a> Neither one could be reached for comment.</p>
<p>The generous salaries that consultants scoop up from unrestricted super PACs and politically active tax-exempt groups <a href="http://www.rollcall.com/issues/57_122/Rules-of-the-Game-Dissecting-Super-PAC-Consulting-213825-1.html?pos=hbtxt">are nothing new</a>, and plenty of Democratic operatives have profited handsomely off exploding election receipts in the post-<em>Citizens United</em> era. But former White House operative Steve Bannon’s self-described <a href="https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?cycle=2018&amp;two_year_transaction_period=2018&amp;data_type=processed&amp;committee_id=C00618876&amp;min_date=01%2F01%2F2017&amp;max_date=12%2F31%2F2018&amp;line_number=F3X-21B">“war” on the Republican establishment</a>, and his <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/welker-steve-bannon-to-target-all-incumbent-senators-except-ted-cruz-1065484867551">pledge to mount primary challenges</a> to every GOP Senate incumbent except Ted Cruz has drawn a growing phalanx of GOP groups that see his renegade insurgency as a cash cow.</p>
<p>In Alabama, Moore was vastly outspent by GOP party committees and outside groups allied with Strange, but nevertheless drew the backing of a dozen conservative organizations that <a href="https://www.issueone.org/money-behind-alabamas-special-u-s-senate-election/">spent close to $900,000</a> on his winning campaign. These included the Great America PAC and an allied group, the Great America Alliance, which <a href="https://www.issueone.org/money-behind-alabamas-special-u-s-senate-election/">spent more than $140,000</a> to support Moore. The Great America PAC spent $28 million to help elect Trump last year, and <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/expenditures.php?cycle=2016&amp;cmte=C00608489">paid $306,336</a> to its lead organizer, longtime GOP operative Ed Rollins.</p>
<p>This year the Great America PAC is gearing up to back several Bannon-allied GOP primary challengers, despite Trump’s <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-trump-mcconnell-meeting-20171016-story.html">recent defense</a> of some GOP incumbents. The PAC’s candidates include Arizona state senator Kelli Ward, who is taking on Senator Jeff Flake, a rare Republican Trump critic, in the primary. The PAC <a href="https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?cycle=2018&amp;two_year_transaction_period=2018&amp;data_type=processed&amp;committee_id=C00608489&amp;min_date=01%2F01%2F2017&amp;max_date=12%2F31%2F2018&amp;line_number=F3X-21B">pays $10,000 a month to Rollins</a> for “strategic consulting,” putting him on track to net more than $100,000 this year from that effort alone. A pair of Ward aides quit her campaign on the eve of Bannon’s appearance at a fundraiser this week, <a href="http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/kelli-wards-shady-senate-kickoff-9791084">complaining to <em>The Daily Beast</em></a> that she would fail to “drain the swamp,” and was “bringing in people from the political consultant class.”</p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">Bannon himself is on a big money chase.</span> The Breitbart News chief already has hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah, in his corner, and in recent weeks <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/18/bannon-mcconnell-republican-donors-243871">he has criss-crossed the country</a> to meet with such GOP sugar daddies as venture capitalist John Childs, Wyoming investor Foster Friess, and Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus.</p>
<p>Bannon <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/steve-bannon-slams-establishment-gop-senators-conservative-voters/story?id=50481686">says his goal</a> is to oust senators who don’t back Trump’s agenda, but that doesn’t explain why he’s ginning up challenges to incumbent senators, such as Utah’s Orrin Hatch, who have largely supported Trump. Bannon’s intent is to blow up the Republican Party so he can remake it in his white nationalist image. But he may also have an eye on the bottom line. Breitbart’s ad revenue <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/aug/25/breitbart-steve-bannon-ad-boycott-revenues">has fallen by 51 percent</a> amid a successful campaign by an anonymous group called Sleeping Giants to convince major advertisers to boycott the site.</p>
<p>Bannon has a long history of making money off right-wing causes and campaigns, and their wealthy benefactors, including the Mercers. Over the past decade, Bannon tapped some two dozen nonprofits and private companies to help underwrite his conservative documentaries and projects, in the process pocketing some $7 million, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/how-bannons-multimedia-machine-drove-a-movement-and-paid-him-millions/2017/04/09/203df1ce-197b-11e7-855e-4824bbb5d748_story.html?utm_term=.9a0facf27fcf">a <em>Washington Post </em>investigation disclosed</a>. GOP leaders have long opposed all contribution and spending limits on campaign committees and tax-exempt groups, such as the ones that paid Bannon. Now Republicans must live with the consequences, as the big money they unleashed enriches and empowers their challengers—and, just possibly, their destroyers.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 19 Oct 2017 13:27:21 +0000228750 at http://prospect.orgEliza Newlin CarneyTeam Trump’s Travel Travailshttp://prospect.org/article/team-trump%E2%80%99s-travel-travails
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<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>he White House is struggling to contain a potentially explosive ethics scandal, and it has nothing to do with Donald Trump’s business conflicts, the Russia inquiry or the many lobbyists writing policy in his administration.</p>
<p>No, the real ethics nightmare that could finally rile Trump’s base voters involves the taxpayer money that super-rich cabinet officials have spent on private and military planes to questionable destinations. Unlike such obscure ethics questions as whether Trump violated the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, the travel scandal is simple. When billionaire cabinet heads jet around on taxpayer-funded charter flights to ski resorts and sporting events, voters grasp instinctively that Beltway elites are following rules that don’t apply to average Americans.</p>
<p>That helps explain why Trump moved so decisively to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/who-has-trump-fired-so-far-james-comey-sean-spicer-michael-flynn-2017-7">punish Tom Price</a>, who resigned as secretary of health and human services after it was disclosed that he had cost taxpayers $1 million in private and military flights to such destinations as Africa, Asia, and Europe. Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/omb/memoranda/2017/m-17-32.pdf">issued a memo</a> reminding agency heads to follow executive branch travel guidelines, and announcing that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly would clear all private and military flights from here on in.</p>
<p>But the travel-related disclosures and the ethics complaints keep piling up, including the news this week that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/10/zinke-trips-fundraisers-ski-resort-243651">attended a Montana ski getaway</a> as one of several fundraising events that he has combined with official travel. The Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog group, <a href="http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/document/complaint-osc-ryan-zinke-hatch-act">has asked</a> the U.S. Office of Special Counsel to investigate whether Zinke’s attendance at a fundraiser on another taxpayer-funded trip, this one to the Virgin Islands, violated the Hatch Act, which bars executive branch employees from soliciting political contributions.</p>
<p>Zinke is one of several Trump cabinet officials whose costly travel habits are under investigation. The Interior Department Inspector General <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/02/ryan-zinke-travel-interior-inspector-general-243370">is looking into</a> Zinke’s airplane trips, which include <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2017/09/28/59533ed8-a4b8-11e7-ade1-76d061d56efa_story.html?utm_term=.22dfa2216a1c">a $12,000 charter flight</a> on an oil executive’s plane. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/10/news/economy/treasury-inspector-general-mnuchin-travel/index.html">is under investigation</a> by his department’s inspector general, who <a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mnuchin-honeymoon-aircraft-20170914-htmlstory.html">first took an interest</a> when Mnuchin submitted a request (later withdrawn) that a military jet fly him to his honeymoon in Scotland. A millionaire financier, Mnuchin has reportedly <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal_government/traveling-in-style-trumps-white-house-wrestles-with-cabinet-costs/2017/10/08/8e6debaa-a953-11e7-92d1-58c702d2d975_story.html?utm_term=.cb99beb84271">racked up some $800,000 for air travel</a>, including an Air Force flight to Fort Knox, where he watched the solar eclipse.</p>
<p>The Environmental Protection Agency Inspector General is looking into <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal_government/traveling-in-style-trumps-white-house-wrestles-with-cabinet-costs/2017/10/08/8e6debaa-a953-11e7-92d1-58c702d2d975_story.html?utm_term=.cb99beb84271">some $58,000 in noncommercial flights</a> that EPA Secretary Scott Pruitt has taken to various U.S. destinations. House Democrats Peter DeFazio of Oregon and Grace Napolitano of California <a href="http://democrats.transportation.house.gov/news/press-releases/top-democrats-request-ig-investigation-epa-administrator-pruitt-s-wasteful">have also asked</a> the EPA’s Inspector General to investigate Pruitt’s “potential waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars” after he hired a ’round-the-clock security detail for $832,735, and set out to build a soundproof phone booth in his office for $24,570.</p>
<p>Also facing scrutiny are Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal_government/traveling-in-style-trumps-white-house-wrestles-with-cabinet-costs/2017/10/08/8e6debaa-a953-11e7-92d1-58c702d2d975_story.html?utm_term=.cb99beb84271">racked up $56,000</a> on private or government planes to destinations that could have been reached by commercial aircraft, and Vice President Mike Pence, who staged a walkout from an NFL football game in Indianapolis that cost an estimated $242,500 to reach by plane, and then proceeded to raise money off his posturing.</p>
<p>Cabinet officials say that their trips were cleared in advance and are well within the rules. The White House has also noted that Obama officials took military flights, too. But <span class="pullquote-right">Trump officials appear to recognize the political damage inflicted by reports that wealthy administration officials are squandering public dollars even as their boss pledges to “drain the swamp” in Washington.</span></p>
<p>As Mulvaney took pains to remind administration officials in his memo last month, “just because something is legal doesn’t make it right.” David Apol, the acting director of the Office of Government Ethics, sounded a similar note in <a href="https://oge.gov/web/OGE.nsf/0/D65181941B4954EB852581B500460DFA/$FILE/OGE%20Acting%20Director%20Memo%20to%20Agency%20Heads.pdf">a sternly worded memo</a> to agency heads on October 5. Apol wrote that he is “deeply concerned” that the actions of some have harmed perceptions about what’s permitted, and urged agency heads to model “a ‘Should I do it’ mentality (versus a ‘Can I do it?’ mentality).”</p>
<p>The administration’s problems may go well beyond optics, moreover, if it turns out that cabinet heads mixed official and political business in violation of the Hatch Act. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington <a href="https://www.citizensforethics.org/press-release/crew-requests-government-wide-investigation-private-jet-use/">has asked Kelly</a>, the White House chief of staff, for “a full, government-wide investigation” to determine whether cabinet-level private jet use has met White House guidelines that require such trips to serve the public interest. The violations that have come to light are not isolated instances, and reflect a broader pattern of ethics abuses that “starts at the top,” says CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder.</p>
<p>“When you have a president who has maintained his businesses despite massive and constant conflicts of interest, and has gone to his own properties at tremendous cost to the taxpayer,” says Bookbinder, “it sends a signal that using government to advance your own personal interests is fine in this administration, and even encouraged.”</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 12 Oct 2017 13:24:09 +0000228706 at http://prospect.orgEliza Newlin CarneyRedistricting Fuels Big Money Arms Racehttp://prospect.org/article/redistricting-fuels-big-money-arms-race
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<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>he partisan gerrymandering case known as <em>Gill v. Whitford </em>that the Supreme Court heard Tuesday is just the beginning of a multimillion-dollar redistricting war between Republicans and Democrats over who gets to draw legislative and congressional district lines in 2021.</p>
<p>The money is being raised through a hodge-podge of legal trusts, tax-exempt groups, and political action committees that in many cases operate outside the federal campaign-finance rules. That means that many donations are not subject to contribution limits or disclosure requirements, thanks in part to a little-noticed and arguably nonsensical <a href="https://www.fec.gov/files/legal/aos/75998.pdf">Federal Election Commission ruling</a> that in 2010 found that redistricting is not related to federal elections.</p>
<p>“It’s an absurd fiction, but it gives the parties permission to raise unlimited money and to not disclose where that money is coming from,” says Paul Ryan, the vice president for policy and litigation at Common Cause, who <a href="https://www.fec.gov/files/legal/aos/75990.pdf">weighed in on the matter</a> at the time as counsel to the Campaign Legal Center.</p>
<p>Ironically, although it was Democrats who <a href="https://www.fec.gov/files/legal/aos/75989.pdf">had asked the FEC</a> to loosen up the redistricting rules, it was Republicans who cashed in on the ruling. Democrats had requested permission for sitting lawmakers to raise unlimited contributions to help pay for legal fees associated with redistricting. The FEC gave Democrats the green light<em>, </em>finding that redistricting is not related to federal elections. Yet in a previous legal tussle with the GOP, the FEC said that “the most important legislative activity in the electoral lives of U.S. House members takes place during redistricting,” which is carried out by state legislators.</p>
<p>That’s cleared the way for a redistricting arms race that cost both parties more than $40 million in the last round of district mapping, which took place after the 2010 census, and could soar into the hundreds of millions this time around as both sides seek to control the process after the next census in 2020.</p>
<p>The latest group to enter the fray is the National Republican Redistricting Trust, a secretive and little-regulated legal trust that has no website and has no plan to disclose its donors, despite <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/deep-pocketed-republican-group-ready-to-battle-obama-and-holder-over-redistricting-control/article/2635885">pledging to raise $35 million by 2021</a>. The group will serve as a redistricting command central of sorts for GOP leaders and groups, and plans to engage aggressively in lawsuits leading up to and following 2020.</p>
<p>Organizers of the National Republican Redistricting Trust bill themselves as an answer to a Democratic group backed by President Obama and headed by his former attorney general, Eric Holder Jr., the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. That group netted $10.8 million in the first six months of this year, divvied up between a federal PAC and two tax-exempt groups, <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/31/democratic-redistricting-fundraising-obama-241154">according to <em>Politico</em></a>. That group’s agenda includes helping to put elected Democrats in control of state redistricting efforts in 2021, mounting lawsuits to challenge rigged maps, and mobilizing support for redistricting reforms to make the process more independent and transparent.</p>
<p>Then there’s Forward Majority, a new Democratic super PAC—a type of PAC that may raise unlimited contributions—that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/forward-majority-outpsent-report-democrats-state-legislatures_us_59cd3932e4b0ef0694271f33">has pledged to raise $100 million</a> in a dozen states over the next four years. The group will start by spending $1 million in the Virginia House of Delegates race in 2017. Holder’s group<a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/29/republicans-redistricting-strategy-2020-243298"> has also given $500,000</a> to the Virginia Democratic Party in advance of that contest.</p>
<p>Still more big money is being hauled in by Republican State Leadership Committee, which <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/527s/527cmtedetail.php?ein=050532524">has spent about $40 million</a> in each of the last three election cycles on state legislative races. A parallel group, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, has a narrower focus and a smaller budget, having <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/527s/527cmtedetail.php?ein=521870839">spent less than half that</a> in the same period. Both groups are so-called 527 organizations, which may collect unlimited contributions but must disclose their donors to the Internal Revenue Service.</p>
<p>State legislative contests remain the primary focus of fundraising by groups that care about redistricting, but “a growing field of engagement is on the legal side,” says Matthew Walter, president of the Republican State Leadership Committee. Walter’s group arguably triggered the redistricting arms race in 2010, when the RSLC scooped up close to $30 million in the run-up to the 2011 redistricting, three times the amount pulled in by its Democratic counterpart.</p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">The resulting GOP state legislative sweep enabled Republicans to draw such GOP-tilted maps that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/forward-majority-outpsent-report-democrats-state-legislatures_us_59cd3932e4b0ef0694271f33">Democrats have lost</a> close to 1,000 state legislative seats and relinquished control of 27 state chambers since 2009.</span> In the House, Republicans bested Democrats by just 1 percent of total votes in 2016 but won <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/republican-group-ready-spend-big-redistricting">55 percent of the seats</a>. Democrats argue that the GOP-rigged maps, drawn with watertight precision thanks to increasingly sophisticated map-writing technology, subvert democracy by letting lawmakers pick their voters instead of the other way around.</p>
<p>The lopsided Wisconsin map, which enabled Republicans to win 60 percent of the seats in the state legislature in 2012 and 2014 while Democrats won the majority of the votes, was the basis of the constitutional challenge heard by the Supreme Court on Tuesday. At issue is whether district lines deliberately gerrymandered to favor one party or another can be found unconstitutional because they are too partisan. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/us/politics/gerrymandering-supreme-court-wisconsin.html">Oral arguments suggested</a> that Justice Anthony Kennedy, considered the swing vote in the case, may favor striking down gerrymandered districts if an appropriate standard to measure unconstitutional partisanship can be found.</p>
<p>No matter how the court rules next June, however, redistricting-related legal challenges are going to keep piling up. If the court sides with Democrats in <em>Gill v. Whitford</em>, expect more partisan gerrymandering challenges to existing maps. If the court lets the Wisconsin maps stand, Democrats and their allies will continue to press for a legal standard to define what constitutes partisan gerrymandering. <a href="http://www.commoncause.org/issues/voting-and-elections/redistricting/common-cause-v-rucho/fact-sheet.pdf">Common Cause has challenged</a> GOP-drawn district maps in North Carolina as unconstitutional in a case that, depending on the Wisconsin outcome, may also land before the high Court.</p>
<p>“Both of the parties will litigate the new maps based on any and every theory that they can lay claim to,” says Ryan. And, he adds, “both parties are going to stockpile as much as cash as they can.”</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 05 Oct 2017 20:26:58 +0000228661 at http://prospect.orgEliza Newlin CarneyThe GOP’s Big Problem Is Big Moneyhttp://prospect.org/article/gop%E2%80%99s-big-problem-big-money
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<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>here are lots of explanations for why Republicans have backed themselves into a corner both legislatively and politically, unable to either enact an agenda or to contain a populist uprising that now poses as great a threat to GOP incumbents as it does to Democrats. The most obvious issue is that the GOP’s intransigence, anti-government attacks, and culture wars have unleashed a monster that Republicans can no longer control. But another, less apparent, problem that helps explain the GOP’s vicious cycle of paralysis and unpopularity has to do with big money.</p>
<p>As the champions of campaign-finance deregulation and unrestricted corporate spending, Republicans on Capitol Hill are now more in tune with their billionaire conservative donors than with the average GOP voters who rallied behind Trump. This shows up in both the shelved GOP health-care bill and in the pending Republican tax overhaul, which both cater to ultra-wealthy donors while ignoring that most Republicans <a href="http://www.kff.org/medicaid/poll-finding/data-note-10-charts-about-public-opinion-on-medicaid/">actually support Medicaid</a> and <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/27/more-americans-favor-raising-than-lowering-tax-rates-on-corporations-high-household-incomes/">do not favor cutting taxes for the rich</a>.</p>
<p>Ousted Trump strategist Steve Bannon gestured to Republicans’ money problem on Tuesday, when GOP incumbent Luther Strange lost the Alabama primary to Christian conservative zealot Roy Moore in a stunning rebuke to the party establishment. Big spending outside groups allied with McConnell had spent more than $10 million to defeat Moore. “Who’s sovereign, the people or the money?” Bannon <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/moore-vs-strange-polling-opens-in-alabama-republican-primary/2017/09/25/9c7192f8-a253-11e7-b14f-f41773cd5a14_story.html?utm_term=.225d926e6297">asked at Moore’s victory party</a>.</p>
<p>Moore’s upset doubly stung Republicans because Trump had backed Strange, and because it coincided with the demise of GOP senators’ latest bill to repeal Obama’s signature health-care law. Both the primary and the GOP health-care failure are emboldening ultra-conservatives bent on challenging Republican incumbents in Senate primaries. This could make it easier for Democrats to pick up seats in the 2018 midterms, since some far-right Republicans could win primaries but prove too conservative to win a general election.</p>
<p>Vulnerable Senate Republicans, such as Jeff Flake of Arizona, and Dean Heller of Nevada, <a href="https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/658070/trump-drives-wedge-between-gop-senate-candidates-his-base">already face primary challenges</a> from the right. Nasty and potentially costly primary battles could also be shaping up in Mississippi, Texas, and Tennessee, where incumbent Senator Bob Corker announced his retirement this week. Waiting in the wings to bankroll some of these challengers are deep-pocketed conservative donors like hedge-fund tycoon Robert Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah, a part owner of the far-right Breitbart News Network. The Mercers backed Moore in the Alabama primary, though they spent far less than McConnell and his allies.</p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">This probably isn’t what McConnell had in mind when he helped convince the Supreme Court in 2010 to lift all limits on corporate political spending in its <em>Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission </em>ruling.</span> The GOP calculus back then appeared to be that Republicans would have an easier time winning over corporate sugar daddies than Democrats would. Now some ultra-conservative billionaires are helping bankroll primary challengers in McConnell’s own party.</p>
<p>Big donors <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/25/16339336/graham-cassidy-republican-donors">reportedly also played a key role</a> in Republicans’ decision to hustle through a deeply flawed Senate bill to repeal the Obama health care law. Republican lawmakers are fond of warning that GOP voters will punish them if they didn’t follow through on their promises to repeal “Obamacare.” But behind the scenes, disappointed mega-donors appear to be the ones driving the repeal train. GOP governors and voters actually now broadly support Medicaid’s expansion, says Richard Fording, a political science professor at the University of Alabama, who noted that attacks on Obama resonate less with GOP voters now that he is no longer president.</p>
<p>“Just because you promised it six years ago doesn’t mean you have to follow through on it if voters changed their minds,” says Fording of the Obamacare repeal effort. Republicans, he added, “should be concerned about the election that’s happening in 2018, and not the one that happened in 2010.”</p>
<p>Congressional Republicans may also find it hard to sell to their party’s populist wing on a tax plan heavily tilted toward slashing taxes for corporations and the wealthy. The big-spending conservative group Americans for Prosperity, backed by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, is <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/20/koch-brothers-americans-for-prosperity-taxes-trump-240762">gearing up to spend millions</a> to back the GOP tax overhaul. Yet large percentages of Republican voters <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/27/more-americans-favor-raising-than-lowering-tax-rates-on-corporations-high-household-incomes/">favor raising corporate tax rates</a>, not lowering them, and a majority think that taxes for those earning $250,000 a year <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/27/more-americans-favor-raising-than-lowering-tax-rates-on-corporations-high-household-incomes/">should either stay the same or be raised</a>.</p>
<p>It remains to be seen whether Democrats can capitalize on Republicans’ self-inflicted legislative failures and intra-party power struggles. Democrats have their own internal battles and cozy ties with big donors, while 10 Democratic senators are up for reelection in states won by Trump last year. But every GOP primary brawl drains Republican resources and creates a potential opening for Democrats. The Democrats’ ridicule of the GOP tax plan as “welfare” for the rich has a populist ring that is tailor made for the growing ranks of GOP primary challengers seeking to oust incumbent Republicans.</p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 29 Sep 2017 09:00:00 +0000228620 at http://prospect.orgEliza Newlin CarneyFacebook Fiascohttp://prospect.org/article/facebook-fiasco
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<p><span class="dropcap">F</span>acebook’s disclosure that it sold up to $150,000 in ads to Russia-based social media trolls during the 2016 election has revived a potentially explosive debate over whether the government should regulate political ads on the internet.</p>
<p>Lawmakers mulling new regulations are sure to get an earful from both free speech advocates and foes of secret spending. Just this week, House and Senate Democrats <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/19/media/congress-facebook-fec/index.html">urged the Federal Election Commission</a> to “promulgate new guidance” on how ad platforms can better prevent illegal foreign spending. But most everybody agrees on one thing: Facebook has been shirking its public responsibilities, even as its power and revenues mushroom.</p>
<p>Facebook has partially mitigated the damage by <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-says-facebook-will-release-the-russia-ads-to-investigators-2017-9">announcing that it would release</a> 3,000 ads to government investigators. “I don’t want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in remarks announcing the move. But it may take a while for Facebook to repair its image, which has been battered by a string of revelations involving its role disseminating “fake” news, and its use (now discontinued) of algorithms that allowed advertisers to target <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-enabled-advertisers-to-reach-jew-haters">such categories as “Jew haters.”</a></p>
<p>And questions remain about whether the ads, which <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/facebook-says-it-sold-political-ads-to-russian-company-during-2016-election/2017/09/06/32f01fd2-931e-11e7-89fa-bb822a46da5b_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_russianads-410pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&amp;tid=a_in">reportedly</a> focused principally on divisive political and social issues but also mentioned Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump by name, violated campaign-finance laws that ban foreign contributions and expenditures in American elections. Facebook has yet to release the ads publicly. Moreover, Facebook has also declined to say who saw the ads, whether certain regions of the country were targeted, and which of the suspected Russian social media trolls and “bots” ran the 470 fake accounts behind them.</p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">Lawmakers <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&amp;q=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/facebooks-openness-on-russia-questioned-by-congressional-investigators/2017/09/18/060e1ee4-9c90-11e7-9083-fbfddf6804c2_story.html?utm_term%3D.24d49ad5c7d5&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1506173474149000&amp;usg=AFQjCNG8YHyJSG5e9bDMex9Sktib0ZSDMg" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/facebooks-openness-on-russia-questioned-by-congressional-investigators/2017/09/18/060e1ee4-9c90-11e7-9083-fbfddf6804c2_story.html?utm_term=.24d49ad5c7d5" target="_blank">have been losing patience</a> with Facebook’s tight-lipped handling of the issue, and have signaled that company officials will be called to testify on Capitol Hill.</span> The FEC, having deadlocked three years ago on Facebook’s request that it be exempted from political ad disclaimer rules, has also <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/15/us-election-agency-seeks-views-on-rule-change-for-digital-ad-platforms/">reopened public comment</a> on whether the commission should change its regulations for digital political ads.</p>
<p>Facebook had been under mounting public pressure to release the ads. Common Cause <a href="http://www.commoncause.org/press/press-releases/russian-facebook-political-ad-buys-during-2016-election-draw-doj-fec-complaints.html">filed complaints</a> with both the Justice Department and the FEC, pointing to the Facebook ads as evidence that foreign nationals made illegal campaign expenditures. The Campaign Legal Center called on Zuckerberg <a href="http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/document/letter-clc-calls-facebook-disclose-2016-ads-bought-foreign-entities">in a letter</a> to release the ads. And the internet rights group Demand Progress collected 40,000 signatures on <a href="http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/tell-facebook-release-russian-troll-farm-ads-public/?source=releasetheads">a petition</a> calling on Facebook to do the same.</p>
<p>“There are complicated questions about where we draw the lines with online communication,” Kurt Walters, campaign director for Demand Progress told <em>The American Prospect.</em> “The ads themselves would be invaluable to figuring out how to create rules that both protect the integrity of our democracy, while not violating any important values of free speech online or similar concerns.”</p>
<p>Still, some argue that lawmakers contemplating legislative fixes should proceed with caution. On the surface, it might look like a no-brainer that online political ads should come with the same disclosures and disclaimers as television ads. Political TV ads must contain a tag line stating who paid for them, while broadcasters and cable operators must publicly report the source and cost of political ads to the Federal Communications Commission.</p>
<p>No such rules apply to the internet, which explains how Russians managed to secretly place some 3,000 potentially illegal ads on Facebook.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, it’s difficult to transfer broadcast and cable TV rules to the internet, as former FEC commissioner Ann Ravel discovered when she proposed that the agency consider revisiting its internet disclosure rules in 2014. Ravel warned that lack of disclosure was an invitation to foreign meddling, and proposed a public forum on the topic.</p>
<p>The backlash was swift. Ravel endured <a href="https://qz.com/1076964/this-us-official-warned-about-russia-using-the-internet-to-skew-us-elections-years-ago-she-got-death-threats/">defamatory attacks and death threats</a>, underscoring the passions that surround internet privacy and free speech. Her proposal also pointed out the challenge regulators face in containing hate speech and disinformation without treading on free expression in the internet age.</p>
<p>“Everyone is aware that there are very thorny policy questions when you talk about the internet,” says Meredith McGehee, chief of policy, programs and strategy for Issue One, which backs campaign-finance changes. “And none of us have any interest in squelching speech, chilling speech or restricting speech.” </p>
<p>Nevertheless, there are some additional, common-sense steps that Facebook and other social media companies can take to restore public trust in the lucrative platforms that now wield such influence in public life. These companies should to require that their advertisers certify to them that their ads are paid for by domestic, not foreign, sources. Social media platforms should also keep track of who paid for and archive their candidate-related ads, in the event that questions arise. Facebook has taken an overdue step toward transparency, but the debate over political internet ads is just beginning.</p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 22 Sep 2017 13:23:46 +0000228554 at http://prospect.orgEliza Newlin CarneyKobach’s House of Cardshttp://prospect.org/article/kobach%E2%80%99s-house-cards
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<p>Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner at a meeting of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity on September 12, 2017, in Manchester, New Hampshire. </p>
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<p><span class="dropcap">C</span>onservatives who have long stoked the myth of widespread voter fraud are discovering what happens when you get a national platform for your conspiracy theories: The house of cards starts to collapse.</p>
<p>Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach won a megaphone for his disputed voter fraud theories as vice chairman of President Trump’s “election integrity” commission, but he was forced to eat crow at the panel’s second public meeting Tuesday in New Hampshire. Having claimed <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/09/07/exclusive-kobach-out-of-state-voters-changed-outcome-new-hampshire-senate-race/">in a <em>Breitbart</em> column</a> that New Hampshire’s Senate race “was stolen through voter fraud,” Kobach faced such a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/02/28/we-cant-find-any-evidence-of-voting-fraud-in-new-hampshire/?utm_term=.170d5d08e0f6">torrent of evidence</a> to the contrary that he publicly equivocated, wondering aloud “if it’s even possible to condense what is really a complex legal issue into an 800-word column.”</p>
<p>Kobach’s fellow commissioner Hans von Spakovsky, a Heritage Foundation scholar who’s led the conservative voter fraud brigade, also fell flat on his face this week. Von Spakovsky <a href="http://gizmodo.com/jeff-sessions-was-lobbied-to-exclude-democrats-from-tru-1804006784">was outed</a> as the author of a <a href="http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/news/press-releases/foia-response-reveals-true-partisan-intent-pence-kobach-commission">Heritage Foundation email</a> that urged the administration in February—three months before the commission’s official launch—not to appoint any Democrats, “mainstream Republicans” or even “academics” to the panel. Von Spakovsky discredited himself further by <a href="https://twitter.com/JessicaHuseman/status/907734647488032769">telling a reporter</a> that he knew nothing of and did not write the email—a claim at odds with the Heritage Foundation’s statement that he wrote it.</p>
<p>The commission’s public meeting was an embarrassment on multiple fronts. One lead witness, John Lott, Jr., a conservative writer and gun rights advocate, who last wrote about voting issues more than a decade ago, suggested with a straight face that the solution to so-called fraud is to subject all voters to the same exhaustive background checks imposed on gun owners. The meeting’s agenda wandered from voter confidence, to voter turnout, to registration lists, to supposed double voting, to voting machine security, with no perceptible focus.</p>
<p>The main purpose of the forum was to trot out evidence of supposed voter fraud, and to fault state and local election officials for allegedly failing to track and prosecute it. Another witness, professional voter fraud investigator Ken Block, complained that election officials have failed to turn over reams of data at no cost to conservative researchers like him. Never mind that state and local election officials are knocking themselves out to run elections on a shoestring amid genuine crises, such as aging voting machines and attempted Russian hacking—issues this commission has all but ignored.</p>
<p>But the biggest embarrassment was Kobach himself, who faced a public dressing down from Democrats on the commission for his unsubstantiated <em>Breitbart</em> claim that fraud changed the outcome of the New Hampshire Senate race, which Democrat Maggie Hassan won by 1,017 votes. Kobach also alleged that “illegal voting” may have been responsible for swinging four electoral votes to Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>Kobach’s proof? A GOP state legislator turned up 5,313 same-day registrants who had not obtained New Hampshire driver’s licenses within ten months of voting—evidence enough to Kobach that “they never were bona fide residents of the state.” But New Hampshire does not require voters to have in-state licenses or even to be residents, only that they be “domiciled” in the state, meaning that they spend most of their time there. That covers college students, frequently the targets of voter suppression efforts, and New Hampshire college towns <a href="https://twitter.com/JessicaHuseman/status/907734647488032769">report the most voters</a> with out-of-state IDs.</p>
<p>Commission member Bill Gardner, a Democrat who serves as New Hampshire’s Secretary of State, told Kobach that his column created a “problem” because it called the state’s “real and valid” election into question. Gardner added: “I hope we all learn from this.” Commissioner Matthew Dunlap, another Democrat and Maine’s Secretary of State, was more blunt.</p>
<p>“Making this equation that somehow people not updating their driver’s license is an indicator of voter fraud would be almost as absurd as saying that if you have cash in your wallet, then that’s proof that you robbed a bank,” said Dunlap. “I think it’s a reckless statement to make.”</p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">Under fire since its inception, and <a href="http://prospect.org/article/kobach-commission-violating-law">facing lawsuits</a> from multiple watchdogs and civil rights groups, Kobach’s commission now faces pressure from grassroots activists and Democrats on Capitol Hill to disband entirely.</span> Protesters gathered outside Tuesday’s meeting, which took place at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, shouted “Shame!” and “It’s a sham,” tweeted <em>Politico</em>’s Josh Gerstein. Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer, of New York, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/08/24/schumers-post-charlottesville-pitch-kill-the-election-integrity-commission/?utm_term=.f77985f0ccaf">has called for</a> the commission to disband, and 32 Senate Democrats have signed onto <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/1547">a bill</a> that would nullify the Trump executive order that established it.</p>
<p>“There is a lot of mobilization—there is litigation, there is public advocacy, there is Hill advocacy,” says Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Gupta warned that Kobach’s end goal is to make it easier for states to purge their voter rolls, and that the commission’s false fraud narrative could encourage states to enact laws that restrict voter access.</p>
<p>Individual commissioners also face mounting pressure to step down. Hassan and the entire New Hampshire congressional delegation, all Democrats, want Gardner to resign from the commission. (He has said he will stay.) Democratic election lawyer Bob Bauer <a href="http://www.moresoftmoneyhardlaw.com/2017/09/pence-kobach-first-day-hearings-von-spakovsky-affair/">has called for von Spakovsky to step down</a>, arguing that “his position on the Commission has become untenable.”</p>
<p>The commission’s blatantly partisan composition and agenda now furnish “more than enough evidence of a Hatch Act violation,” Republican ethics lawyer Richard Painter <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/09/13/the-voting-commission-is-a-fraud-itself-shut-it-down/?utm_term=.1b385fabeac2">told <em>The Washington Post</em></a>, referring to the 1939 law that bars most federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity. The commission already <a href="http://prospect.org/article/kobach-commission-violating-law">faces a Hatch Act complaint</a>, filed by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Kobach’s commission may survive such challenges, but it’s become such an embarrassment that Trump, well known for his aversion to criticism and bad press, may be tempted to shut it down himself.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 14 Sep 2017 17:46:13 +0000228471 at http://prospect.orgEliza Newlin CarneyGOP to Latinos: Drop Deadhttp://prospect.org/article/gop-latinos-drop-dead
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<p>Republican Senators Cory Gardner, John Barrasso, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, John Thune, and Majority Whip John Cornyn on September 6, 2017</p>
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<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>he Republican Party has now officially abandoned Latinos. It’s not clear how much of a political price Republicans will pay for this, but we may find out as early as next year, when midterms may coincide with a GOP-authored mass deportation.</p>
<p>Sure, there are Republicans who want to find a legislative fix during the six-month window that President Trump has given Congress to act before he yanks legal protections from 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. These “Dreamers” have been working and studying here legally since 2012 under President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.</p>
<p>But who really believes that this GOP-controlled Congress can enact a bill to save DACA by this spring? Republicans have killed or blocked immigration legislation three times in the last decade. Multiple DACA-related bills that span the ideological spectrum are back on the table, but between lawmakers’ packed legislative schedule and the internal GOP disputes that have paralyzed Congress all year, it’s hard to imagine a sudden immigration breakthrough.</p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">If anything, the basic rift that perpetually tears Republicans apart on immigration—between nativist hardliners and pragmatic business conservatives—is now deeper than ever.</span> Far-right groups like the Center for Immigration Studies, the Federation for Immigration Reform, and Numbers USA, which <a href="https://www.plotagainstdaca.com/">have ties to white nationalists</a> and which espouse extreme anti-immigrant policies, have risen to new prominence since Trump’s election.</p>
<p>Who backs these groups? FAIR, CIS, Numbers USA, and other anti-immigrant groups have scooped up close to $100 million in grants between 2006 and 2015 from such deep-pocketed conservative funders as the Scaife Family Foundation and the Sidney A. Swensrud Foundation, according to <a href="https://www.plotagainstdaca.com/">a recent report</a> by the Center for New Community, which tracks what it calls “organized bigotry” in the United States.</p>
<p>Who fronts for them? Several prominent leaders from FAIR and CIS now serve in or advise the Trump administration, including Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has held posts both with FAIR and with its legal think tank, the Immigration Reform Law Institute, and who helped initiate and draft the leading state legal challenges to DACA. (Kobach also serves on Trump’s <a href="http://prospect.org/article/kobach%E2%80%99s-looking-glass-commission">controversial</a> “election integrity” commission.) Anti-immigrant groups and their leaders <a href="https://www.plotagainstdaca.com/">have spent millions</a> lobbying and advertising against DACA, and have stepped up pressure on the Trump administration to rescind the program in recent months.</p>
<p>“These anti-immigrant groups now have unprecedented, unparalleled access to White House officials,” says Ethan Fauré, a research analyst with the Center for New Community, who helped author the group’s report.</p>
<p>Yet business leaders, already at odds with Trump over white supremacist violence, have come out <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/05/news/ceos-react-to-daca/index.html">by the hundreds</a> in defense of DACA. Some prominent CEOs have pledged not to fire DACA workers and to <a href="https://www.recode.net/2017/9/5/16255490/microsoft-satya-nadella-offered-aid-employee-worker-trump-daca-dreamer-deport">pay for their legal counsel</a>. Pro-DACA immigration advocates organizing sit-ins and rallies are receiving a potent lobbying assist from their business allies. Not everyone in this coalition agrees on overall immigration policy, but the DACA program itself is broadly popular, says Arturo Vargas, executive director of the NALEO Education Fund.</p>
<p>“I don’t recall a moment, certainly in the immigration debate, with this kind of broad support outside of the administration, even on both sides of Congress,” says Vargas. “So I think there is a real opportunity here to do something.”</p>
<p>Even if Congress fails to enact legislation, the DACA fight could create a political opening for Latinos, and for Democrats. Republicans have been worried about shifting demographics since 2012, when Latinos voted for Obama over GOP nominee Mitt Romney <a href="http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/11/07/latino-voters-in-the-2012-election/">by 71 percent to 21 percent</a>. A Republican National Committee <a href="https://prod-static-ngop-pbl.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/RNC_Growth_Opportunity_Book_2013.pdf">postmortem</a> that year warned, “It is imperative that the RNC changes how it engages with Hispanic communities to welcome in new members of our Party.”</p>
<p>Predictions that Latinos angered by Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric would help deliver victory to Democrats fell short last year, of course, though some exit polls that suggested more Latinos voted for Trump than for Romney <a href="http://prospect.org/article/latinos-and-future-american-politics">have been called into question</a>. Nevertheless, the states that delivered the White House to Trump—Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin—are not heavily Latino, notes Vargas, who credits a Hispanic voter surge to the election of five new Latinos to the House and the first Latina to the Senate.</p>
<p>And the basic math of Latino political power <a href="http://prospect.org/article/latinos-and-future-american-politics">remains the same</a>: <span class="pullquote-right">Between now and 2030, roughly 40 percent of all new voters will be Latino, and nearly one million U.S.-born Latinos will turn 18 and become eligible to vote every year.</span> By wide majorities, moreover, Americans think the “Dreamers” should be allowed to stay in the United States; according to one <a href="https://morningconsult.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/170409_crosstabs_Politico_v1_AG-2.pdf">Morning Consult/Politico poll</a>, that even includes 73 percent of Trump voters.</p>
<p>Given how effectively GOP-drawn district lines protect Republican incumbents, however, many conservatives will be more worried about primaries from the right than about angering Latino voters. Still, <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/news/opinion/trump-daca-republican-immigration?utm_content=buffer89313&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer">some speculate</a> that if DACA is suspended in the spring of 2018—a strong possibility if Congress can’t come up with a legislative solution—the political timing will be terrible for the GOP. Vulnerable Republican Senators in Arizona and Nevada, for example, are seeking re-election in heavily Latino states but are also expected to face primary challenges.</p>
<p>Trump’s declaration puts his congressional allies in a box, and delivers Latinos a potential watershed moment. Says Ben Monterroso, executive director of Mi Familia Vota, which advocates for the Latino community, “We are going to be holding them accountable, and we are going to be watching what they do.”</p>
<p><em>This post has been updated.</em></p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 07 Sep 2017 13:33:53 +0000228444 at http://prospect.orgEliza Newlin CarneyHow Long Can Republicans Ignore the Russia Scandal?http://prospect.org/article/how-long-can-republicans-ignore-russia-scandal
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<p>Special Counsel Robert Mueller departs the Capitol after a closed-door meeting with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee about Russian meddling in the election and possible connection to the Trump campaign, in Washington, Wednesday, June 21, 2017. </p>
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<p><span class="dropcap">A</span>midst floods, nuclear threats, and white nationalist violence, the latest disclosures from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election would be easy to overlook.</p>
<p>But the news that Trump allies last year <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/top-trump-organization-executive-reached-out-to-putin-aide-for-help-on-business-deal/2017/08/28/095aebac-8c16-11e7-84c0-02cc069f2c37_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-low_trump-russia-235pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&amp;tid=a_inl&amp;utm_term=.0e495d049d41">sought the Kremlin’s help</a> with a Moscow real-estate deal, and voiced hopes that it would boost his presidential campaign, moves the Russia scandal into new territory. Trump’s most hard-core loyalists may not care, but the broader GOP electorate is starting to pay attention, and that should worry Republicans facing midterm elections next year.</p>
<p>Russia is not the only factor fueling GOP unease, but there’s evidence that Mueller’s investigation is hurting Trump’s support within his party. Between March and June, the percentage of Republicans who said it was at least somewhat likely that Trump’s campaign associates had improper contact with the Russian government rose from 25 to 40 percent, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trumps-handling-of-russia-investigations-weighs-on-approval-ratings/">one CBS News poll</a> found.</p>
<p>In that same poll, a full 75 percent of Republicans said Trump should not try to stop Mueller’s investigation. And 56 percent of respondents from both parties said they thought Mueller’s investigation would be impartial, with 63 percent disapproving of Trump’s handling of the matter—his worst ranking on any issue.</p>
<p>Republican disenchantment is at least partly responsible for the recent decline in Trump’s approval rating, which <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/201617/gallup-daily-trump-job-approval.aspx">Gallup now places</a> at 35 percent. A recent <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2017/08/29/republicans-divided-in-views-of-trumps-conduct-democrats-are-broadly-critical/">Pew Research Center survey</a> also found that nearly a third of GOP respondents agree with Trump on only a few or no issues, and nearly six in ten say Trump should listen more to Republicans who have experience working in government. Among Republicans, 19 percent also said they did not like his conduct, though the survey did not address Russia specifically.</p>
<p>“He will continue to have his core, he will continue to have a majority [among Republicans], but it will be a shrunken majority,” says John J. Pitney Jr., a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College. Voters aren’t “focusing on any particular angle” of the Russia story, Pitney adds. “Rather, it’s the cumulative effect of all the stories adding up to a picture of a corrupt president.”</p>
<p>The latest Russia developments, reported in both <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/top-trump-organization-executive-reached-out-to-putin-aide-for-help-on-business-deal/2017/08/28/095aebac-8c16-11e7-84c0-02cc069f2c37_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-low_trump-russia-235pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&amp;tid=a_inl&amp;utm_term=.0e495d049d41"><em>The Washington Post</em></a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/us/politics/trump-tower-putin-felix-sater.html?mcubz=0"><em>The New York Times</em></a>, cast the problem of Trump’s business conflicts in a new light. Trump <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/the-cases-against-trump-continued/530466/">faces numerous lawsuits</a> over his failure to divest from his business empire, including allegations that he has violated the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which bars elected officials from accepting anything of value from foreign interests.</p>
<p><span class="pullquote-right">To be sure, the steady stream of stories about foreign visitors to the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C., may be <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/08/24/545901857/trump-continues-to-brush-aside-conflicts-of-interest">starting to lose their shock value</a>. </span>The recent Russia disclosures go beyond mere conflicts, however, and raise questions about <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/144596/donald-trump-fruit-poisonous-tree">a possible quid pro quo</a>. During last year’s campaign Trump business adviser Michael Cohen <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/top-trump-organization-executive-reached-out-to-putin-aide-for-hel">reportedly emailed</a> Dmitry Peskov, a longtime lieutenant to Russian President Vladimir Putin, to ask for help reviving stalled plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Russian American businessman Felix Sater also reportedly trumpeted the deal’s potential to boost Trump’s campaign, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/us/politics/trump-tower-putin-felix-sater.html?mcubz=0">emailing Cohen</a>: “Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it.”</p>
<p>Cohen reportedly never heard back from Peskov, and the Moscow Trump Tower was never built. But these disclosures raise the stakes for Trump. The probe already had brought forth questions about collusion, fueled by the disclosure that the president’s son and many of his top aides <a href="http://prospect.org/article/fec%E2%80%99s-moment-truth">met with a Russian lawyer</a> last year in hopes of collecting dirt on Hillary Clinton. Now the question is whether team Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/08/29/what-more-proof-of-a-secret-russian-connection-do-we-need/?utm_term=.3217f3bfb66f">engaged in outright corruption</a>, by promising favors to Putin in exchange for help building a tower in Moscow.</p>
<p>Most Republicans on Capitol Hill, presumably fearful of angering Trump’s right-wing base, have resisted Democrats’ calls to aggressively investigate the president. As if to prove the extent of GOP loyalty, House Republican Ron DeSantis, of Florida, <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/28/mueller-investigation-republicans-russia-242108">unveiled a measure</a> this week that would block Mueller’s funding after a six-month period, and would bar him from investigating any matters prior to June of 2015, when Trump launched his presidential campaign.</p>
<p>But Mueller continues to move forward aggressively, last month ordering a raid on the suburban Virginia home of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, and this week <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/29/politics/mueller-manafort-attorney-spokesman-subpoenas/index.html">issuing subpoenas</a> to Manafort’s spokesman and to his former lawyer. Mueller is also reportedly investigating Trump for obstruction of justice. And Trump, far from thanking the GOP leaders who are giving him cover, has taken to <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/25/trump-gop-attacks-fallout-grows-242051">openly attacking</a> his fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill.</p>
<p>The Russia probe <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/05/democrats-trump-russia-blowback-241346">holds dangers for Democrats, too</a>, who risk being accused of overreach if they push too hard for Trump’s ouster—just as House Republicans were when they impeached President Clinton in 1998. But when it comes to midterms, the fortunes of the party in power are invariably tied to those of the incumbent president. Congressional Republicans who fail to take the allegations against Trump seriously may soon find that they cannot escape the fallout.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 31 Aug 2017 13:19:05 +0000228413 at http://prospect.orgEliza Newlin Carney